The PokeSpe Story Collection
by Zero Slash One
Summary: A collection of stories from Pokemon Adventures, ranging from the commonplace to the obscure; 'no-holds-barred' is the order of the day here.
1. Aquamarine - The End of The World

**Welcome, one and all and whoever bothers even reading this section. I suppose I should explain what this particular story/collection is going to be about? Well, to be more verbose than the (22-01-2015) planned title, this series is going to revolve around just about every shipping that the Pokemon Adventures fandom contains.**

**Partially, this project was initiated because I feel that the archive isn't diverse enough in the mangaverse shippings it offers. In my experience, somewhere between 70 and 90 % of the ship-fics around here are about:**

**Special - OldRival - MangaQuest - Frantic - Commoner - Haughty - Chess**

**While I in no way mean to suggest that this is not fully permissible or that these pairings are in any way bad, I just like less run-of-the-mill ships than mostly comes out and about. ****To illustrate my point, let us consider how many pairings that can be made using only the regional groups.**

**Red/Yellow - ****Green/Blue**** -** **Red/Green - Blue/Yellow - Red/Blue - Green/Yellow**

**Gold/Silver -**** Gold/Crystal**** \- Silver/Crystal**

**Ruby/Sapphire**** \- Ruby/Emerald - Sapphire/Emerald**

**And our total comes to 4/12 possible pairings (at the very least, I've got enough ta work with here). To further illustrate the point, let us lift the restriction of 'same region's group' (we have no reason not to, given how they canonically are implied to interact offpage).**

**I'll spare you the tedious list this time and just tell you the end result: 90 different combinations between the first ten Pokedex Holders ****alone****, and yes, I have spelled it out the long around. Factor in the additions from Sinnoh, Unova &amp; Kalos (Diamond &amp; Pearl &amp; Platinum, Black &amp; White &amp; Lack-Two and Whi-Two, X &amp; Y), we wind up with 19 characters each with 18 possible pairings: Almost 350 possible combinations, threesomes not counted but counting the redundancies of that '350' number.**

**Relatedly to the above points/fandom gripes, I would be more than happy to accept pairings/threesomes to write about, provided they revolve around any one (or two) of the first 10 Pokedex Holders in some way. ****Het/Yaoi/Yuri/Interspecies... I severely doubt that any pairing no matter how unconventional could make me hesitant to write about it. Yes, this is a challenge to anyone reading this.**

* * *

**Disregarding my meandering and extensive musings about the shipping fandom, I hope that you enjoy this chapter. **

**The pairing at hand is Aquamarine (Crystal/Suicune), and it is going to get fairly outlandish and disturbing. Anyone discomforted by that are welcome to click away, in whatever direction strikes your fancy. Read on at your own leisure. Reviews are most welcome.**

* * *

_How did one go about relating the tale of an immortal? By their very nature, such a creature existed beyond time, so where was the beginning and where was the end of their lives?_

_This, then, was a half-assed attempt at just this, phrasing an experience alien to human nature in terms that might make sense to people, or perhaps not. _

_Ahem..._

The time of the Pokedex Holders was at an end.

Over the years, they had faced enemies almost beyond imagination, and some really strained credibility, mind you... after perhaps their greatest adventure, their time was over, and their end had heralded the end of much else as well.

The evening sun was setting, but its dying floodlights bathed Mount Silver still. Befitting the onset of night, a deathly silence had descended around the majestic mountain.

The mountain was now almost devoid of life, in large part due to the recent events which had plagued the entire continent upon which it stood, and with it, the adjacent regions: Kanto, Johto, Kalos, Sinnoh and Unova. The only exceptions were a pair on a grassy knoll located somewhere on Mount Silver's west side, a human woman and a mythical Pokemon, who were seemingly preparing to bump uglies (if her state of undress and their positions were any indications in that regard)

More than anything else, Crystal felt sickened at the situation_._ Sickened at what she knew to be wrong and yet could not bring herself to refuse. Sickened at what she had gotten herself into.

If nothing else, she reflected, nervous mental fidgeting meant that she would not have to focus on the more-than-slightly-uncomfortable-and-disturbing-sensation of _it_ brushing against _that _particular spot.

She cared deeply for the creature, she would not deny that anymore, not ever, but violating _this _taboo as well, push it this far, was not something that she felt should ever be done. She still found that, in a deep, dark and tasteless part of her soul, she longed for it; the wrongness of it simply held a certain appeal.

Mere moments later, an off-kilter symphony of sorts began, a symphony of flesh warring blissfully with flesh. Within moments, the human reached her peak. Within moments, the Pokemon reached his peak. As the seconds passed, they regained their clarity of consciousness and continued the act. Their apprehensions about it were all but forgotten, replaced by physical sensations of an altogether different nature.

Underneath the moon's silvery lights, the human and Pokemon screwed their own and the other's brains out. At first somewhat reluctant to do so, the raven-haired woman soon began to place earnest kisses against the muzzle of the mythical beast. If Suicune took notice or offense, it did not make that known, but continued its libidinous actions.

In the distances, fires could be seen. In Kanto. In Johto. In Kalos. In Sinnoh. In Unova. Hellish bonfires of enormous proportions had consumed the five regions, and ushered in the end of both species' time on earth. The people were long gone, departed for elsewhere, but the buildings remained, at the moment.

That whole night, the Pokemon and the human boinked relentlessly and endlessly, even as the land they inhabited burned, ignited by both hellfire and phoenix fire.

When the moon began to retreat and a multi-billion tonne sphere of fire and light and continually combusting matter would soon arise in its place, they were soundly asleep.

That very next morning, the immortal human awoke, barely. In about half a minute or perhaps more than a minute, the dark-haired twenty-year-old had awoken fully. Her attention and sight was almost immediately drawn to her vagina, and the light leak of fluid there.

It was with shock that the previous night's events returned to her, hitting the calm surface of her mind like a lump of concrete. Her expression darkeneed in clear discomfort over the conclusion she was arriving at: If the human body was genetically compatible with Pokemon spermatozoa, then she might get pregnant from this.

Strictly biologically speaking, she knew that it was not within the realm of plausibility but within the realm of possibility that it would happen. There were all sorts of biological restrictions involved that should rule it out without argument, but conversely, Pokemon breeding frequently bypassed those restrictions, and she recalled a few theories about humans being one species of Pokemon, from the days where she was still an ordinary person.

She swallowed hard, nervousness written all over her face.

Deciding not to commit further thought on that matter, she sat up, looking out over Kanto. The sight of that region burning was at once terrible and wondrous.

Idly, she wondered how her younger selves, her at twelve and her at sixteen, would react to her as she was now: Immortal, and in love with a Pokemon, and watching Kanto burn like it was a show for her amusement. She imagined that they would be disgusted (or at the very least disapproving) by her callousness and Pokephilia.

She would have been too, if it was somebody else, she mused.

Now, though, she knew better than to be displeased with somebody's choices. She smiled joylessly, reflecting that it was strange how only two years had led her to what and where she now was. It seemed so brief a time, now that it was in the past, yet it had caused her to change more and in more ways than the eighteen years before.

Idly, she speculated about letting go, entirely. Everything that caused her to fret and worry about the situation stemmed from the morals and values from her days as a mortal human living among other humans, in a society built by humans and for humans. What good could those values be in this world of today, where human culture was dead?

Perhaps it was for the best that she severed her remaining ties to humanity. After all, by what standard was it logical or moral to share the stigma against Pokephilia yet not bat an eye at entire cities burning to the ground? Perhaps it would be better to eschew the factor of their differing species altogether.

_"If only it was that easy," _the immortal human reflected tersely. A mental peptalk was not sufficient to simply brush away the things she had been raised to believe, the things she had believed for almost her entire life, and it was naive to think that it could.

Shaking off that line of thought, she refocused on the eternal bonfires in the distance.

The remote crimson burning was reflected in the deep blues of her eyes, and she peered into the inferno, mesmerized by it.

The Kanto region had burned like the phoenix for two years already. The Kanto region would burn like the phoenix for several years more.

It was impossible to determine how long Crystal spent, just staring into the fires of hell. It might have been hours or minutes, or even days that she sat there. Her sense of time was all but lost to her.

Time passed, and the woman sitting on the mountainside continued to peer at the cities that had been set ablaze, as peculiar as the sentence might seem.

Time passed, and she continued to stare, transfixed, at the fiery death of the Kanto region and the fiery rebirth of that part of the planet.

Still more moments passed, long after the previous forgotten ones, and she bathed in the ruddy floodlights that marked the abandonment of the human race of their homeworld.

Immortal now. More a living idea than a human now.

Her musings were interrupted suddenly, when she felt Suicune affectionately muzzle its head against her neck. with a faint smile, she reached out and caressed the Legendary Beast's head, on the underside.

She let out a sigh. Even if two years wasn't enough time to fully come to terms with her new life, it didn't matter: There would always be more time.

And more time, there was indeed.

Over the months that followed this event, the two immortals journeyed across the Five Star continent, time spent on pursuits of many kinds: Living and exploring and loving, and preparing this world for the next of earth's masters, a race that had unknowingly waited over 200,000 years to be born.

Time passed, mostly unseen yet blindingly fast, as it was known to do.

Years passed, and across the planet, the two immortals roamed. In many places, they left children behind, tiny little mortal Suicunes, to roam the planet as they did.

Decades passed. The children matured and died, the parents lived on without ever aging. The passage of the years left their marks on the two immortals, oh yes, but not physically - at first, Crystal grieved for her lost kids, but as more and more of the little half-human critters shuffled off the mortal coil, her sense of compassion shriveled, a necessity to live for so long, or perhaps not.

Centuries passed. A pack of newborn Suicunes had formed and begun to thrive upon the earth, racing across the world as they desired or needed. In those days of the lives of these ancient demi-gods, the rigors of age had altered Crystal almost beyond all recognition, into a creature that her younger, human self would only be disgusted by.

Millennia passed. Crystal had by now fully realized just how different she now was from a normal human, mind and body and soul. Deep within the Sinjoh Ruins, upon the Mystri stage, the posthuman dudette laid sprawled out, lost in introspection and meditation about everything and anything, no longer paying attention to space and time.

She never ate or drank, never moved or slept, never did anything other than think for a dozen dozen years or so. Suicune watched over her, every second of that time, never leaving her company.

Such was the way they had lived for about four million years. Such was the way they would live for about four million years more. Such was the way of the immortal.


	2. Frontier - Multidimensional Chess

**Okay, now that I reread this, I can see how this would read as little more than senseless phrases clustered together. I'm not entirely certain myself what manner of elaborate metaphor or statement was intended with this, and I'm not even going to bother wracking my brain trying to figure it out.**

**In lieu of other idle prattle, I hope that you enjoy this weird-as-all-hell Frontiershipping oneshot. If you can make sense of it, you win.**

* * *

In a place that resembles a well-furnished and spacious high-end apartment _(metaphorically speaking; such residences exist only in 3D spacetime, and no 21st century human architect has managed to come up with even the idea of a 4D spacetime apartment, outside of weird Sci-Fi) _is virtually everything that can be expected to be within such locales.

The kitchen is nothing if not roomy and well-supplied, and the seventeen-year-old Crystal is absently making herself a sandwich. This is a truth, loosely, mutually conflicting and valid as most truths are.

Two floors above in their bedroom, Gold and Silver and Crystal are pressed against eachother and holding on for dear life. The twenty-year-olds are embracing love and lust in equal measure, hurtling uncontrollably and unstoppably towards their shared climax and utterly lost in the heat of the moment. This is a truth, loosely, mutually conflicting and valid as most truths are.

Outside on the beach, Red and Gold are having a double-battle with Blue and Silver; the red-head doesn't feel the interest but he cannot deny Blue anything.

Back inside the house, within a room best described as a gray-slated void, a different sort of battle is taking place, not between Pokemon but between two naked humans, using everything that the Five-Dimensional Conceptual entities have at their disposal.

The blond boy sits in a meditative position, his face unexpressive, but Crystal doesn't miss him shift state, onto those of his millionfold alternate selves who learns the science and becomes an accomplished Alchemist, but not on the level of FullMetal.

The floor crackles with the azure Alchemical lightning of a transmutation and it comes alive, moving up to encapsulate Crystal in a dome. She doesn't hesitate to unleash Pride's shadowy mass. The umbral tendrils creeps from underneath her red shirt and slice the construction into countless chunks.

They fall to the ground, shimmering fleetingly with their left-over transmutive energy, and the second they land, Emerald unleashes his second assault, a flurry of spears forming and flying at her, only to scrape against Greed's Ultimate Shield and fall again.

In silence, they ponder their next moves. Around them, physical space deforms as their makeshift battle-field converts to 5-D space. In the split-second that Emerald is disoriented, she lets rip a barrage of icicles directly at him.

In the brief moment before space realigns itself to the tenets of 5D geometry, a chaotic disorderly void reigns supreme and undisturbed, devoid of any brand of logic. It is through this non-space that the icicles hurtle, and one of them slice open Crystal's gastrointestinal tract and pours its contents free. Another splinters against the deep-red armor-skin of her eyes. Around them, the remaining icicles drift in geosynchronous orbit and does a little dance and makes a little love and gets down tonight.

Crystal grimaces, and feels the initiation of the fact of Time Lord chrono-biology termed 'Regeneration', and her body erupts into golden light and flame, and her material manifestation collapses onto another state of quantum superposition as does her consciousness, and a different expression of Crystal replaces her.

She glances down briefly with her mind's eye: Her ampler chest and the Ouroboros on her sternum and the sudden appearance of the runes on her arms makes it abundantly clear to her that the current iteration of herself has somehow replaced Lust of the Homunculi.

"I love you," she speaks abrubtly after twenty or so minutes of silence. Her voice is not one voice but many, and many of the voice-layers conveys different intents and extents of that sentiment.

Without warning, their small corner of 'the world' snaps back into 3D reality and with that, the field of their fight changes again. Alchemical lightning crackles, and in defiance of both Alchemical principles and earthly physics, matter is created from nothing.

The sparks dance and shimmer, and the chessboard gradually constructs itself, tan wood and white spots and black spots and pillars at each edge of the four spots. The crackling noise rips through the air all the while but neither reacts in any way to it.

Instead, they consciously bring about a shift of their own quantum superposition states: She remains in the body of Lust, and he remains in his original body but with Alchemical skill, but their minds ceases being truly separate.

In short order they agree on the specifics of this chess-match - starting player: Crystal - starting layer: Five - number of dimensions in which to play: Five; height/width/depth/forwards and backwards in time/sideways in time - and begin the game itself. They rule out moving sideways in time, because Time-Active chess is complicated enough to keep track of without alternate gamestates muddling it. As it was, it is a continually self-revisioning line, singular, of a game.

In essence, it's a Time War encapsulated as a chess game. The distinction is academic.

Crystal reaches out with her mind several turns in the future and moves her Queen away from an otherwise-inescapable trap of Knights onto the present playing field, at G5-8. She learns then what he does in the future - assemble a veritable fleet of Knights - and resolves to counter-act it before it even forms.

Emerald counters easily with a Pawn to capture the royal piece. Both know that it is the move he was going to make. Both know that it was the move she wanted him to make. Both know that it was the best move to make under those circumstances.

She moves again, a Rook moved from further in the future to put his King in check. Such is the nature of 5D chess: Pieces jump back and forth in time, and endless volleys can be launched even without deviating from the opening set-up. Winning the game, then, is all but impossible.

She doesn't care, and neither does Emerald, who simply disposes of her Rook by mentally moving a Knight from the future trap for her three Queen(s) and captures her Rook.

Crystal scowls and Lust's eyes gleam malevolent red. She is perfectly aware of how stuck the situation is about to become: If she takes his Knight, he'll respond in kind, and they'd be locked in a possibly endless back-and-forth as they fought over a single space out of over five-hundred. If she doesn't, he'll have assembled the first piece in his 'Fleet of Knights' and the tactical high-ground.

She does, and like that, the war begins. The battle of D4-1 happens over and over and over ad nauseam, but the exact course of events doesn't matter because it is less a series of events and more a single metaphor. They're all conceptual beings here, so that isn't surprising.

Bottom line: No one wins because neither of them can. So, D4-1 is abandoned, left with a single pawn to denote it as a lost cause, and they move on to other spaces on the boards.

The next 'assault' is launched by Emerald using the pieces that he already has on the board. In a 3D game, that might seem... of consequence but in a 5D game, it is simply one manner of offensive play.

His 'Fleet of Knights' or 'Codename: Singularity-Trap' is assembled quickly on the core eight spaces because she allows it and because she knows that she could end it in a second whenever she wants. Several turns later, she does, and in the past, one of her Pawn begins to make its way towards the future site of Emerald's formation.

Emerald responds to her assault on the past of the game by capturing her Queen in the present. In this particular conflict between past and present, the past barely manages to assert its dominance, like a horny mutt that has its mate backed into a corner, and the shape of the boards changes again from the alteration of history, as it will again.

What it results in is Crystal having eight Queen-pieces from past and future stationed in one present at the corners of the boards, prepared to strike at anything in their lines of sight, an unguarded King, and nothing else.

What it leaves Emerald with is a King, surrounded by twenty-six Pawns in an unbreakable formation, and three Knights flitting about. Twenty or so turns _are _a long time, they know, but neither can for the life of them work out how exactly the 'new timeline' of their match resulted in these set-ups; neither bothers to.

The rest of the game board is wide-open and free of the Pawn-marked 'dead matches', as if the revision of game-board has wiped them away too. It makes no difference whether those remain or not; earlier and later, they'll cease to exist again.

The game continues apace: Both of them employ many openings and gambits that aren't possible in 2D or 3D Chess, and several that are. Emerald's next moves takes place over several minutes, not in the sense that they chronologically take minutes, but in the sense that they transpire over the few minutes they're made and after they're made.

It fails completely, swept aside like a passing breeze by a simple move of one of her Queens. They continue onward, each executing a series of moves as coordinated and graceful as a seasoned dance artist's performance.

The specifics don't matter: From their perspective, everything - space and time, matter and energy, sooner and later, chess moves and human lives - is blurry at the edges, too much for them to tell the whole messy thing apart, and subdivide it into neat little sections for convenience.

She continues to make the moves, and somehow, they remind her in their own ways of their multitudes of possible lives.

The move of a Pawn a board up, and something like a summary, a bare-bones minimum, forms in her mind: They are the victims of a sudden vampire attack. Time passes, for both living and dead. Within the millennium, they've become perpetual companions _(not always friends, not always lovers, but always 'companions')_ on an aimless and endless tour of the galaxy.

Queen captures Pawn: They are traveling with the Doctor, a number of incarnations after his thirteenth, and they experience many adventures. It comes to an end as the tenures of all companions do when the death and bloodshed claims them. Their 'consolation prize' is that they live long enough to witness the birth of the Dalek Predator, that ushers in a new age of safety and peace for the universe.

Knight captures Queen: In a dimension that barely qualifies as real, somewhere between their universe and the FullMetal Alchemist universe, the twenty-seven-year-old Crystal tries to perform Human Transmutation to revive her dead brother. To no-one's surprise, it Rebounds and costs her both arms. The thought does occur to her but she isn't the FullMetal Alchemist, and so she never applies for the State Alchemist program. Instead, she lives out her life in Rush Valley, with frequent visits to Winry Rockbell for maintenance of her Automail.

Bishop captures Knight: In a dimension tangential to that one, they are the Homunculi Lust and Envy who abandoned Father's ambitions alongside Greed, but they flee to the distant country of Xing where Wrath and Pride can't locate them. From a small village, they observe Father's plans from the outside, hearing and seeing Hohenheim's counter-machinations in the vaguest of details. The thought of aiding either side does strike them, but to hell with Father and to hell with Hohenheim: They have their own lives to live and they are decidedly _not _going to expend energies of their Stones on unproductive speculation.

Pawn captures Bishop: Memories of a possible future play in her mind, and by extension his as well. After the end of the world _(well, one of them, the one they don't prevent or overturn) _has occurred, they're simply alone on Earth, wandering a dead world with plenty of food and drink for them to indulge to their heart's content. Ten years of unrestrained avarice proves sufficient before they commit joint suicide; what other options are there?

Rook captures Pawn: Memories of a possible past play in her mind, and by extension his as well. After a failed coup d'etat, they're appointed the leaders of the criminal syndicate, Team Rocket, which is more power and responsibility than they deserve and/or desire. The exact chain of events is somewhat hazy, but within five years, they rule the continent and the death-tolls (daily, not total) number in the dozens; it even becomes a game of sorts, seeing who can find the most original way to kill someone.

Queen captures Rook: They are a pair of cards in the Deck of a nameless _(not technically 'nameless' but her name keeps on changing as the timelines change) _Duelist, a contemporary of the pro-Duelists Syrus Truesdale and Aster Phoenix and Chazz Princeton, and a lesser known Duelist named Jaden Yuki. She does occasionally cross paths with them, but never quite becomes a fixture in their social circle because she doesn't feel a need to.

Pawn captures Queen: They're immortal dimension-travelers who leave their marks on the places they stumble into; whether that mark is social upheaval or a leveled city or an abandoned infant mostly depends on, well, they don't quite know themselves... the mood of the weather, maybe?

The game continues with moves made and moves countered and moves coming undone, mostly as the situation demands but occasionally just because they have that option.

Mere moments later, Crystal has been pushed back into a corner; her King is on A8-8, and guarded by two rows of Queens from C6-6 and inwards. A wordless agreements shifts the next battle in the game to 3D space, and what is perhaps the longest of the battles yet waged unfolds.

She simply moves a Queen back and forth, while he assembles four Knight-pieces from out of time. His formation is shot down immediately, because the tricky moves of a Knight is no match for the sheer power of just one Queen, and against more than a dozen, their slim chances of survival becomes less than zero.

Despite that, the slaughter of Knights does result in a Queen being captured, so it isn't a complete loss, Emerald deems the battle. Five more turns pass, and Emerald has readied another assault: Five Rooks in a neat row, seemingly aligned to be fired as if from a cannon.

The match continues, forever. The world outside the game carries on, forever.


	3. Four Ships With Emerald

**Okay, this time, I will finish this fic, come hell or high water. Basically doing a few snippets based off those Imagine Your OTP things. All Emerald-oriented because damn everything, there isn't enough ship fics with him in them; the FrontierShipping section alone is criminally understocked (correct me if I'm off, but literally only ten people or I can think of ships it).**

* * *

_FrontierShipping_

_Imagine your OTP watching a bad science fiction movie. Person A keeps complaining about the inaccuracies, while person B cuddles them. Person B affectionately calls person A a nerd before kissing them._

Crystal rolled her eyes at the sight unfolding on the TV screen.

Emerald, head nestled into her stomach and arms wrapped around her, shot her a curious glance. "What's up?"

Reaching for the remote, Crys hurried moderately to pause the movie. "Patrick just froze in practically five seconds. I mean, really."

Emerald now looked quizzically at her. "So?"

"_So,_" Crys stressed. "You don't just turn into a Cryogonal just because you get into outer space; it would only happen if he'd been out for maybe a day, and he wouldn't freeze in the first place because he's facing the freaking _Sun! _I mean, for crying out loud, would it really've been tough for the writers to google that for a minute?"

Now it was Emerald's turn to roll eyes at her. Shrugging, he replied, "Sure, but it's just a movie. Science goofs ain't the end of the world."

Crys nodded; the physics nitpicker in her still wasn't pleased with the obvious error (because what kind of logic were the writers using that made them think, exposure to a sun led to flash-freezing?). She resumed the movie. Emerald snuggled into her stomach, consciously affecting a playful demeanor. A smile grew on her face.

About five minutes passed, in which no giant burning meteors crashed into the earth and ended human society.

Then Crys piped up again, "Oh come on!", and paused the movie for the whateverth time.

"What now?" Emerald commented, and sat up.

"3,000 kilometres?" Crys highlighted, gesturing indignantly at the TV. "For real? Who wrote this?"

Emerald replied with an amused almost-scoff, and leaned in for a quick kiss. He paused in the instant before their lips made contact, and whispered good-naturedly, "ya're such a nerd," then went in for it. A moment later he broke away.

"Says the one who picked the movie," Crys fired back, amused.

"Yeah? Well... _says_ the one who spent half the movie complaining about physics," Emerald retorted.

* * *

_HammerspaceShipping_

_Imagine your OTP at the beach at sunset watching the waves while contemplating life._

Sometime in 2003, on a beach south of New Bark town, a certain pair of Pokedex Holders were lying side by side, while the passing of the multi-million ball of burning metals popularly called the sun ushered in the end of another day. For longer than both had really bothered to keep track of, silence had reigned, and they savored the silence as best they could.

"Hey, Yellow?" Emerald suddenly voiced. The fifteen-year-old glanced at him. "Where'd ya figure you'll be in five years?"

The blonde turned pensive. Tough question, she remarked mentally.

When she was five, she hadn't expected to ever meet Red or capture Ratty.

When she was ten, she hadn't expected anything of the adventures she would have or make as many friends as she had.

"Dunno, to be honest," Yellow answered simply.

* * *

_SeduceShipping_

_Person A and person B are happily married. The end. Just write some happily married fluff. Do it._

The year was 2015, the place was room 517 of the Coumarine hotel; what more needed be exposited about?

In the smallish hotel room, there wasn't really much going on or much to look at. The decor was sparse; the bed and the closet was literally about everything there was in the locale. The atmosphere here was a warm one, both from the sunlight pouring in and from the lethargic air surrounding the two in the bed.

Tucked beneath the violet sheets, Lucy and Emerald were resting the morning away, his lanky arms visibly draped around Lucy's mid-section underneath. Looks of quiet contentment adorned their faces.

Uneventful moments passed matter-of-factly in the hotel room. For the better part of twenty minutes, the couple laid half-asleep, locked in an intimate embrace, savoring the other's body-warmth all the while. Then, Emerald tightened his hold on his wife, minimallly yet detectably to the Pike Queen.

Unsaid between them was the agreement that this was their damned best anniversary yet.

* * *

_RevolverShipping_

_Imagine your OTP fucking on a kitchen counter._

The twenty-three-year-old groaned loudly, half from no longer being able to keep silent. Emerald breathed gutturally, about ready to explode right then and there.

The blond male's rock-solid member probed the raven-haired male's depths, persisting in a arrhythmic grinding motion that seemed almost mechanical; the task was carried out with as much force as he could present to the task at hand. His face was awash in ravenous delight.

Though his body was pretty much covered in sweat, and though he was rapidly approaching orgasm, Ruby found both time and energy to go for a bit of mental reflection, as we humans were known to do during kitchen counter sex.

Barely thirteen seconds elapsed before their current session concluded with mutual, earthshaking peaks.

* * *

**Screw it, finishing this as-is.**


	4. Four Ships With Crystal

**Well, whenever I get this done, I have officially finished the toughest 1,000-ish words I've ever had to.**** Also, I think this collection contains a higher concentration of FrontierShipping than this entire archive.**

* * *

_FrontierShipping_

_Imagine your OTP/OT3 lying on a hammock together_

The sun was setting over Johto yet again. It was a rather magnificent sun that dyed the late-evening sky a dozen shades of orange. A raven-haired woman laid in a hammock, gazing out over the waves. She wasn't quite lost in thought, nor was her attention entirely on her surroundings.

No, she was gazing softly at the blond who was lying with his head nestled against her stomach, with his arms around her. A smile adorned her face.

Time passed lazily.

After a while, the blond released a contented sigh, savoring the warmth of her body. With her left hand, she absently began stroking his golden tresses.

The moments passed slowly. Their hammock swayed gently, almost in tune with the waves. Neither Crystal or Emerald seemed about to end their embrace. After an hour or perhaps two of simply lying there, amid the waters and the wild and the endless silence, they had fallen soundly asleep.

* * *

_ScarletJewelShipping_

_Sometime after person A has tragically died, person B sits alone and apologizes for what happened_

The sun was setting. Crystal strode through the cemetery, by her lonesome. Save for the sound of her footsteps and the whistling of the wind, a somber silence hung over the area.

She arrived quickly at the gravestone. To her perpetual bitterness, it was an unremarkable slab of stone with a few hollow words among others, not the audacious monument Red so deserved.

"Hi again, Red," she said to the grave, kneeling down before it. "It's been a while, huh," she said, wistfully. "Well, I dunno if you've been watching or listening in from the afterlife, or if you can, if that's how the afterlife works, but anyway, breaking news: I have a daughter now. Her name is Opal, and she just turned three."

Her voice halted at that, both lost for words and for a desire to continue. She sat there for a while, silently staring at the grave.

"I'm sorry, Red," she whispered finally. "If I'd been just two damned seconds faster, you wouldn't..."

She fell silent again, and just sat there. Only once the sun had left her did she rise and begin to leave.

* * *

_SilverCrystallineShipping_

_Imagine your OTP playing Pokemon and battling. What are their respective teams? Who wins?_

Crys was staring intently on the DS. She was a Pokemon ahead of Silver, five to four, but with Megaree facing his in-game Weavile, that could very soon change. She clicked for his party. Available on the screen were Monlee and Archy and Marowee with their hit points in green; Parasee with hit points in the yellow section of the bar; Xatee with no health.

She pondered for a moment whether Monlee or Archy would work better better against the Ice/Dark type, before swapping Meganium out for Arcanine.

"Aw, c'mon," the red-head grumbled. "Here I have you cornered and with a type advantage and then you pull this switching crap on me?!"

"Well, blame Nintendo for allowing switching, not me," she countered, amused.

While they had chatted, the animations had proceeded; the Arcanine's Intimidate ability had lessened the attacking power of Weavile, and in return, had received a Metal Claw attack, which cost it a small chunk of its hit point. Once they noticed that turn of events, Silver frowned and Crys beamed triumphantly.

"Big deal," he dismissed.

Crys glanced quickly at the screen, deciding that he would likely switch to something with a type advantage over Archy, which meant either Feraligatr or Kingdra or Gyarados or Rhyperior; it was the safest thing he could do, and if she was right, the Thunder Fang attack would leave a hefty mark, plus maybe a paralysis. If it was the Gyarados, it might even be a knock-out blow. Trouble was what happened next: In that scenario, it would be best to switch to Megaree again, the grass type had the upper hand on most of his party, but/and if she did, they were in for a switching war.

Silver glanced at the screen at the same moment she did, considering his next move. Switching out was probably best, since the Arcanine had the type advantage, which he knew Crys knew as well as he did and was therefore planning for him to do. Could Arcanine learn electric attacks? Wild Charge and Thunder Fang didn't seem impossible, given its shape. Rhyperior was immune to electric attacks, so that seemed the soundest decision, but that would leave him open to her Meganium's Giga Drain. Kingdra was his best choice against both of those possibilities.

After a half-minute pause, both began to make their moves for that turn.

As Crys had expected, Silver switched his Weavile out. She hadn't entirely anticipated it to be into Kingdra, but if all went well, it made no difference. Arcanine went on the offensive, dealing out the Thunder Fang attack Silver had anticipated. What he hadn't anticipated was the attack actually inflicting paralysis on Kingdra.

Crystal smirked infuriatingly and impossibly good-naturedly to him. He blew it off with a scoff of half-genuine annoyance.

The virtual battle went on while the rain outside poured like there was no tomorrow.

* * *

_LazuriteShipping_

_Imagine Person A and Person B having shower sex._

The water rocketed from the shower-head, down onto and around the bare-bodied women giving shower sex their best attempt.

Blue proceeded slowly and cautiously, not so much keeping her girlfriend's pleasure in mind as much as focusing on maintaining stable footing for them both. Her hand mainly roamed around on the Johtonian's upper torso, venturing exploratory caresses of the breasts and the valley between them, with the occasional foray into other regions of her body.

Crys could feel herself tense vaguely, only half-way enjoying Blue's ministrations on her left breast. It was a stretch to say that Blue was managing to deliver a world-shaking orgasm, or even accomplishing much. Shower sex, the raven-haired woman decided, was yet another thing that the PokeStar Studios exaggerated.

The brunette frowned, disappointed with Crys' unresponsiveness (she'd expected at least light panting from that bit of tit massage) but she understood why: This thing really wasn't living up to its hype.

She withdrew her hand. "Wanna call it quits?" Blue whispered to her, the ghost of a sigh weighing her voice down.

"Yeah," Crys answered.

A moment later, she turned around to take Blue into a firm embrace, and nestled her head against the brunette's neck. A relaxed smile grew on the dark-haired woman's lips as Blue draped her arms around her.

"Much better," Crys murmured.


	5. Four Ships With Sapphire

_DeepBlueShipping_

_Imagine your OTP after battle, holding each other while wearing ripped up, bloody clothes._

The older brunette shivers, embracing Sapphire silently with all the force she can muster at the moment. On her back, there is a gash of considerable length in her top and the flesh underneath, reaching close to half-way down her back, from which blood trickles freely, red and bright in the setting sun. On many patches of skin are scrapes and scorch marks. Some wounds are worse than others, but they all hurt.

Around the two, there are countless bodies, both of humans and Pokemon, lying scattered, riddled with wounds. Many of them still live. A few of them were friends to the two Pokedex Holders.

Sapphire clings to Blue, hellbent on not letting go. There is a deep and bloody wound in her left shoulder, and her blood has gotten on their clothes. She feels more pain than she can bear from her ribs, almost.

They are surrounded by a number of fires, leftovers from the battle and Blaziken's final attack, that cast dying embers around. They whisper to one another that they would get through this, they were gonna be fine, they would survive. They doubted their own words.

The brunette howls her agony to the heavens when it dawns on her that the other has died in her arms.

* * *

_FranticShipping_

_Imagine your OTP sharing earbuds._

An imaginary camera began playing. It opened on a scene of a bedroom. Sapph and Ruby laid nestled together in a beanie-bag, dozing off, half-asleep. Her arms were wrapped securely around the other teen's mid-section. Shared between them was a single set of headphones connected to a Pokegear that was currently playing.

Contented smiles showed on their faces. A relaxed air reigned in his bedroom. The moment and its quiet joy seemed never-ending. Such went one moment of their lives together.

* * *

_MangaAdvanceShipping_

_The improvised one of the litter_

The Venusaur stared down the Blaziken, extending its vine-tentacles. The fighter-chicken, tense in its stance, released flames from its wrists in response to what the dinosaur did. Red and Sapphire stared at one another intently, awaiting the other's next move.

The brown-haired teen gripped her Troppy's ball tightly, calculating that Red would switch his Poliwrath or Gyarados in. The dark-haired male recalled his Venusaur, sending Aero in instead. With that, their current battle took a different turn, into the infinite sky.

* * *

_TreeStarsShipping_

_A and B are sitting on the grass and having a picnic, holding hands as they watch a beautiful sunset. No, A doesn't wake up and B has been dead. No, A isn't dead either. Make your readers happy for once._

On the coast of the Petalburg forest, a pair of young women were conducting a picnic, or rather an improvised one. Save a mostly-empty basket, they had brought only a sheet to lie down on and watch the sunset from. Around the couple, a pleasant silence reigned.

The evening sky, endlessly expansive above their tiny noggins, were dyed myriad shades of red and orange and yellow by the setting sun. That provided them a natural vista of grandiose beauty to commemorate their outing.

Sapphire felt Crystal's hand find hers, flushing mildly. She let out a relieved, happy, sigh. The hours of the evening were almost glacially slow in their passage


	6. UnluckyNumber - Only Fic Ever

**Now, something for perhaps the strangest ship in all of Pokemon Special (and to some degree, every pairing ever). Yes, I_ am _going to make a serious take on a crack-ship, why do you ask?**

* * *

When they lived in a world where the thirteen of them were the last humans alive, and everything that had mattered in the world before the end, it became more crucial than ever that they stuck together; even if the reason was only that they were humans. With that in mind, they made a unanimous decision to cohabitate at Platinum's mansion.

After the passage of a handful of months that were sometimes quiet and sometimes eventful, the former Pokedex Holders had managed to make themselves a new home.

It had only a fraction of the creature comforts it had once had, and it required constant maintenance, and its resources were scarce, and it had provided little shelter against foraging Pokemon from the wilderness, but nonetheless it served its purpose for all the time that they lived in it.

Even with their closest friends beside them, life in a world where their options were either dragging out a life of no consequence or making a painful end to it was bitter and lonely, and offered few joys.

Silver was the first to perhaps lose his mind, or the first one who made that known. He sought comfort in the embrace of Blue, his sister in all but blood. She allowed him into her bed. Scarcely a moment after they had reached their mutual peaks, he broke down into sobbing. She only held him, silently, until he recovered his composure.

Over the next several weeks, they continued their string of unchaste encounters, motivated by the instant relief it provided. The possibilities that they might fall greatly sick or that she could come to bear him a child because of them were not things that they allowed themselves to dwell on it. All that mattered to them in those days was the distraction sex could provide.

It wasn't long before they were joined by Red; barely a week. After he had learned of what they did together, and a brief occasion to converse about the matter, it had transpired that the coal-haired man joined the metaphorical fray. For about an hour, he experienced more sex than he had in his life prior, and also got to experiment with homosexuality. Red walked away from it, overall satisfied with himself. The other two were left alone in the bedroom to experiment themselves.

As one might expect, they were not so subtle (or covert, if one preferred that term) in their erotic pursuits that they could keep them hidden from their comrades forever. Indeed, nor did they.

One evening, late after the sun had gone down and after there had been no Tyranitar attack that day to spoil the good mood, Yellow paid Blue a visit. To condense an evening into a sentence, it began with a discussion of the brunette's recent activities and ended with the blonde spending the night on bonding of a certain sort with the brunette.

It was this event that, in hindsight, they would find, had begun the escalation of the romance drama in the household; literally out of all sensible proportions. Sapphire, Gold, Emerald, Crystal, Diamond, Ruby... one by one, the human residents were drawn into what had begun as Blue's and Silver's attempt to find comfort amid a hopeless reality.

The specific details of these developments were, frankly, best kept between the people themselves. After all their struggles, they deserved that small bit of privacy. What could safely be told was this much - what transpired in that mansion in those days discarded the idea of monogamy, and the rejection of all of human society's notions relating to bumping uglies.

There was scarcely any pair to be made among them that did not partake in the act together, in those days. That was not to say that they did (whether consciously or unconsciously) gravitate toward specific individuals (for instance, Platinum and Diamond and Pearl much preferred one another, and together they formed a stable triangle), but more commonly was it that they roamed broadly among themselves.

Mewtwo closed the book with minimal mental effort, feeling uncertain about what to make of the strange tale.


	7. Frontier - 50 Sentences

**Figured it would not _hurt_ to diversify what I've got in this series, so, a fifty sentences list; the current version of the Frontiershipping one I did a long time ago.  
**

* * *

01 - Memory - What they remembered best of that evening on the mountain, when he gutted up and told her about his crush on her, were uncertain exchanges and the warmth of the other's hand.

02 - Hero - If there was any proof that heroes, by whatever standard they were measured, existed in this world, the thirteen-year-old had found it in her.

03 - Rain - She enjoyed watching rainfall a good deal, for something about that function of nature entranced the teen, and with such comforts as pleasant silence and her best friend nestled up close to her, she could imagine few better things to do on a dark October evening.

04 - Blood - The female period was one of the things that grossed Emerald-the-young-boy out, and that Emerald-the-grown-man regarded as only one of the facts of living with her.

05 - First Kiss - An awkward affair (partly a consequence of their differing heights, partly a consequence of their inexperience), too much nose-bumping for comfort between two teenagers in a forest, with one or two Pokémon as coincidental audience.

06 - Mischief - For all that Crystal carried an air of studiousness and sternness, Emerald was well aware of how much fun she could be (in more ways than one).

07 - Smile - That one smile on her face, every so often - tired, heartfeltly content, vaguely eager - when they met the mornings from the same bed, was something he knew that he would never tire of seeing.

08 - Devotion - Over the years, Crystal came to believe that no matter the circumstances, her best friend would always have her back, and this was a belief often vindicated.

09 - Question - "Why_ do_ you pee outside instead of using a toilet like a regular person?"

10 - Vacation - Their favorite place for a sojourn was easily the city of Coumarine in the Kalos region of the continent, and its local hotel, for the grand view of the ocean and the easy access to the gemstone of a city that was Lumiose.

11 - Anger - They both knew that the easiest way to get him well and truly pissed at someone was to cause her harm, and she occasionally found that of his traits sweet.

12 - Sex - Emerald had quite a healthy sexual appetite, she had learned over the years of their adulthood, and while she appreciated that on many nights, there were just as many when she desired nothing else but to bury herself underneath the sheets with him in a warm embrace.

13 - End - One of life's most bitter lessons was the knowledge that all things were transient (the seasons passed in cycles, childhood paved the way for adulthood, all that lived eventually died), but they both took solace in the knowledge that they would (almost) always have another day to spend with one another and with their friends, until the day when he didn't.

14 - Name - They were both named after jewels, so it seemed only fitting that their daughter received a name to continue that theme.

15 - Defeat - "Checkmate," declared the fifty-something woman slyly after having moved her second Queen to the eight row.

16 - Quiet - The thing that irked the raven-haired woman about the mundanity of her adulthood was ironically that self-same quality, as however pleasant the quietude and not needing to embark on adventures felt, dammit, it felt like she wasn't doing enough.

17 - Talent - Her uncanny knack for Pokemon capture, and everything related to that field, never ceased to amaze the nineteen-year-old.

18 - World - That evening on the mountain side, when he told her he liked her, and all they did after was sit quietly and anxiously hold hands and admire the half-concealed moon, was one he doubted he would ever forget (for good or ill), for it had made him feel like they were the center of the world, the whole _universe_.

19 - Last - She knew that there apparently were people out in the world who were fans of the Pokédex Holders and that they didn't think that she and Emerald would date for very long (the reasons varied; it was Gold or Silver she was truly in love with; a short man did not a good boyfriend make; she only regarded him as a brother-figure like Blue did for Silver; occasionally, it was something else).

20 - Heights - One of the reason he liked to spend time with Crystal and his friends was that they never made him feel like his height meant anything.

21 - Snow - The fifteen-year-old couldn't help but to fall over laughing and let himself lie in the snow, once that final snowball had hit him.

22 - Music - A lot of the time, Crystal couldn't quite think of the fifteen-year-old blond's new habit - of using whatever song he'd recently heard and decided catchy as his personal leitmotif - as anything remotely awesome or badass like he thought it was, just a fun and endearingly silly quirk of his.

23 - Home - It had not fully registered to him just how much it had become routine to fall asleep with her, and wake up with her, and go through the daily grind with her, until the day when he had done the routine for the last time, and now nothing was the same.

24 - Walking - Having the opportunity to just hang out, them and their Pokemon, walking lackadaisically along the coastline, without having to worry about the weights of the world or the pressures of society, was a rare one, so Crystal made a mental note to savor the occasion.

25 - Magic - They had both seen strange and macabre, almost impossible, things, and fought for their lives more than once before they had even turned fifteen, but moments when they could just lie down and nestle up on the couch and watch movies together, made the teen feel like all the battles and hardships were worth their while, just for happy and mundane moments like these.

26 - Morning - It wasn't often, hardly a weekly thing, but occasionally, come the weekends, Crys liked to bundle up with Emerald underneath the sheets and just frolic the morning away, in ways either chaste or sexual, and sometimes both, however the mood felt on the particular morning.

27 - Touch - One thing among several that he learnt over the first months of being her boyfriend, was that she could be very affectionate and touchy-feely at times, as new to this as he was, and while it had taken quite a bit of time for them to find a degree of physical contact they were mutually comfortable and satisfied with, the effort was worthwhile in the end.

28 - Heaven - Emerald first thought of heaven as less a place and more a state of mind, on the morning after their first time, amid the quiet-slash-awkward-slash-pleasant atmosphere that abounded while they laid bare-naked underneath the sheets, when the moment's magic was gone and the reality remained.

29 - Hell - Neither of them could keep it together while the orphanage burned, not with the screams filling the air, but they couldn't bring themselves to walk away from the horrific sight either.

30 - Surprise - "You _actually _heard someone substitute 'Arceus' for God in a sentence?"

31 - Guideline - There was no such thing as a predefined formula or an instruction manual for how dating someone worked, and more than once had they, humans who were best versed in things that could be organized into multiple separate quantities and systems, where the logic and intelligence required to analyze these subjects were everything required for success, bemoaned that fact.

32 - Story - She was the hero who set out because there were people who needed help, he was the child who got inspired by her example and set out to be better than he was and become her peer, and the years before their adulthood was their fairy-tale, and the years after their childhood was their mostly-happily-ever-after.

33 - Answer - "I just want to make it clear that I am _not _saying no," said the teen, and in a mildly hesitant manner took his hand, and for a long while, neither spoke again.

34 - Sudden - It happened, one day which was otherwise ordinary, that she saw herself in a mirror and it dawned on her then that she had spent thirty years of her life with him, more time with than without.

35 - Breathe - Confronted with a Crys who wore only a smile that spoke volumes and a purple shirt that revealed more of her chest than it covered from this angle, Emerald was finding it distinctly challenging to breathe.

36 - Sleep - Crystal enjoyed sleeping with him greatly; not in the traditional sexual sense that the phrase commonly meant, just in the sense of innocuously lying snuggled up together and lazing the mornings away.

37 - Change - From being kids having fun with all the world's freedoms, and burdens as well it seemed, available, to being young adults sharing an apartment and with too many thoughts about their lives and futures circulating in their brains to convey all of them, to being parents to a little girl.

38 - Drunk - When the fabric of reality unraveled in the area and the strangest of demons from a multitude of hells flocked into the bar through impossible angles and when time flowed neither forwards or backwards but in an intricate three-dimensional shape, Emerald decided that they had probably gotten enough to drink, not that he knew what kind of alcohol could cause such a thing...

39 - Endless - When they were young, their days seemed endless in every regard, but the adults were left with the bitter truth of life that nothing lasted forever.

40 - Innocence - The teenager had worried a bit if Emerald was smitten with some idealized version of her, a perfect sweet-heart who was always right and could do no wrong (she liked to try her best in all things, but she wouldn't pretend she was so pure), and how he might react to fully realizing she was only one single imperfect human.

41 - Wonder - The nineteen-year-old was continually perplexed over the fact that there were people around the world who wrote fanfiction about the Pokedex Holders and posted such stories online, and only moreso (as well as mixedly disappointed and amused) by the general writing quality and content, and for his part, Emerald just thought it was hilarious (particularly the worse and weirder ones, like the stories where Green and Blue were apparently a couple).

42 - Naked - The twenty-two-year-old's mind went more or less into shut-down mode at the sight of her, everything bared, shooting him a broad and not so chaste grin that spoke volumes of her intent, while his body went more or less into autopilot to ensure some privacy.

43 - Summer - "Please", she breathes to him, hands resting on their backs over her eyes, her skin caked in sweat from the heat and humidity, "tell me that the sun's setting soon."

44 - Winter - Winters like this one, where there were about six inches of snow around Violet City, sucked ass, grumbled the five-foot-tall man silently.

45 - Fortune - It was a fixture in their weekly schedules that every saturday, they had movie nights between just the two of them, and in her heart, Crystal relished that they lived in a world where that was available to them.

46 - Stable - Much of what they did were pure routine (wake up, get dressed, groom yourself, make and eat breakfast, go to work, get home from work, make and eat dinner, do whatever in the evenings, go to sleep), and the twenty-six-years-old was not quite sure whether he liked or disliked that fact.

47 - Just - Ruby liked to imagine that there had to be some extraordinary, deep and philosophical, reason that they were together, but the simple fact of it was that they were fond of one another.

48 - Smile - The smallest and simplest of gifts, yet enough to brighten their days.

49 - Worry - They both felt uneasy about being a couple, during the early weeks; for Emerald, it was rooted in the suspicion that she was humoring him and didn't truly return how he felt, for Crystal, it was rooted in the nagging doubt that they could still be friends if it didn't work out.

50 - Completion - It felt to her only like things were coming full circle, the day that Opal showed up in her lab, with a burgeoning fire in her jade-green eyes and only a Chikorita at her side, to receive a Pokedex of her own.

* * *

_**Fi-nally!**_


	8. A Measured Response to Fanfiction

**Just gonna be up front about that this is largely a means for me to vent my frustration with this degenerate cess-pit of a fandom, and its abundance of fanon and cliches.**

* * *

"People actually think that about me?" questioned Yellow aloud, eyes skimming the screen. Upon the screen was a story, in which she was portrayed as a shy-tempered girl and a damsel-in-distress who needed Red to save her from a Blastoise. The idea displeased the blonde.

"You think you've got it bad?" deadpanned the raven-haired nineteen-year-old who sat in the office-chair on her right. "Apparently, our fanbase thinks that the only guys in my dating-pool are Gold and Silver, or that I've blue hair."

Crys felt the urge to release a weary sigh, and did so. As weird as it was to find out that the Pokedex Holders had fanclubs both on the internet and out in the world, learning about what their fans believed about them was... she couldn't even think of a proper word for it, save for perhaps irritating. Sure, some of their ideas were neat, others were mostly right (such as that one fan who 'headcanoned' what sort of music Green liked to occasionally train his Pokemon to), but a lot of it just didn't align with reality.

For one, the Azalea wing of the Pokedex Holders Fan Association had Green's and Blue's names switched. Apparently their logic was that the names of Kanto's first three Pokedex Holders differed from the color of their 'starter' - Red with the green Venusaur, Blue with the red Charizard, Green with the blue Blastoise.

As Crystal pondered, Yellow resumed her leisurely exploration of the fanfiction hosting site. The Healer halted at a certain entry, then immediately decided against reading it.

In bright golden letters, the title of the story which had caught her eye was presented as PokeSpe Strip Poker. "I don't think I wanna know who wrote _this_ one," muttered the blonde.

Crys, taking a peek, could only agree with her friend. "What the hell kinda perv...? If that one has any actual story, beyond just us playing strip poker for no good reason, I'll be seriously surprised."

Being that it was reading material, she had expected it to be reasonably entertaining; not every story could be top-notch, and she was fine with that.

What fanfiction was, in actuality, was absolute garbage. Close to eighty percent of the time, their prose and grammar was terrible, cringe-worthy. Of what remained, eighty percent had hole-ridden plots and no clue how the Pokedex Holders actually acted in real life. If she read another sappy story that paired her with Gold, in which narrative she was made out to be an insanely short-tempered ass, she was going to scream.

The other so-called 'shippings' were little better, as they either got a lot of the details about their personalities wrong; or else, they blew minor traits completely out of proportion. Crystal couldn't for the life of her remember a point in time where Blue had even cracked a joke about playing matchmaker like these people apparently thought that she did.

* * *

The Battler rolled his eyes at the drawing. While most of what their fans thought was pretty cool stuff, things of tortured logic reminded him of why Green's disdain for them was pretty understandable.

On the screen was a drawing of an event that was less than recent in Red's life - of a moment where the nine Pokedex Holders from Kanto, Johto and Hoenn were standing in a line and watching the ferries approach the Battle Frontier.

"Do people seriously actually think that us standing next to each-others means we're in love?" questioned Red aloud. By that logic, such as it was, Crystal would've hooked up with Yellow instead of Emerald. Neither him or Ruby were dating Sapphire. Both Gold and Silver were single.

He couldn't pretend to know what went on in their heads; judging from their kinda-creepy insistence that none of them could date outside their research-group - and then, only in narrow categories - it was probably best that way.

* * *

"What the hell?" spoke Silver, tonelessly, once he clicked back out of the story. It was, to a degree, understandable - fanfiction and good writing were pretty much polar opposites, and most of their fans hadn't ever met him or Blue, so how could they get anything about their personalities right? Some of them didn't even get her _name _right.

It still annoyed him something fierce that people had them so wrong that that they could think that there was anything romantic going on him and his sister.

He had half a mind to go throttle the people who thought so, especially the ones who thought he was concealing his love for her and wasting away on the inside because of that. Was it really so hard for them to consider that his love of her wasn't dependent on sensationalized swappings of spit?

"God, the shippers," grunted the red-haired male.

* * *

"Ladies and gentleman," spoke the leading fanboy to the others, both fanboys as well as fangirls, who were seated around the table. "I have called for this meeting, because there has been a troubling development. Some of you might have heard of this already, but for the benefit of those among us whp have not heard the dire news, I will speak: It seems that Crystal has begun dating someone who is neither Gold or Silver."

For a moment, grave silence abounded in the room. Then, a chorus of "Lolnope" rang out from the fans whom he addressed.

"Out of curiosity," spoke generic fangirl number three, with a tone of utter disbelief, "who is it if not either of them?"

The leading fanboy looked almost repulsed by the thought. "Emerald," he answered finally.

Generic fangirl number three, or G-FG-#3 as she henceforth was to be referred to, blanched. "Ew, the short guy. How do we put a stop to that?"

Leading Fanboy was at a loss for an answer. "I wish I knew. The psychological security systems of our fanbase doesn't include a plan in case something like this happened. I suppose that we could deploy a trainer with a Psychic-type to adjust their minds and make things right again, but if our intervention were to come to light, it might be construed as reflecting poorly on MangaQuest.

He paused, allowing it a moment to sink in.

"What choice have we?" spoke G-FB-#4. "Nothing must threaten the absolute superiority of MangaQuest. I propose that we carry out that correcting measure and then kill the asshole who dared defy the OTP."

All eyes now went to him. To the satisfaction of the rabid fanboy, a couple of them weren't denying the truth he'd spoken.

"That," answered their leader, "is an extreme that I think most of us would avoid resorting to, but you might be on to something. If our options are either to, Arceus have mercy, allow other pairings or to take lives to keep things running smoothly, then we absolutely must weed out the filth-people among us before they ruin the fandom."

"Agreed," spoke a fangirl. "Nothing must stand in the way of MangaQuest, no matter what."

"I wish to object to the measure of killing Emerald," voiced G-FB-#1. "Re-applying the security system that Crystal's view of Emerald are purely as a sibling ought to suffice, and it will mean that no further murders can be traced back to us."

Their leader nodded. Ultimately, the Pokedex Holders didn't know what was best for them.

"Meeting adjourned."

* * *

Blue grumbled. Having a guest show up and interrupt her in the middle of her lovin' was _not_ fun. An idea occurred to her mid-stride; perhaps Matthew might appreciate that apology for the distraction. Yes, she was certain that he might.

Arriving at the front door, she quickly straightened out her attire. With a little luck, she thought, her going commando would go unnoticed.

Blue opened the door, meeting a brown-haired male in a hoodie. "OMG, GREEN!?" he squealed at the top of his lungs. "DATE RED!"

In the moment that it took her to blink and process that, the twenty-two-years-old observed somebody else tackle the stranger to the ground. "BLUE SHOULD DATE GREEN!" the other male screamed at the guy he was pinning to the soil.

"Red," he spat, "you fool. It's canon!"

"Nuh-uh, OldRival is," he countered, and went in for the bite. The first male cried out (Blue winced at the sound), then punched the other guy in the side. Quickly getting atop him, the first male began punching the second guy in the face. Blue watched on, worried and bewildered.

"Filth, like, you, doesn't, deserve, to, exist," he screamed at the guy he was punching. Each blow was punctuated by a word in that sentence.

_"OH God,"_ grimaced Blue, _"fan-brats."_

With that thought, she slammed the door on them. After a moment, the fighting pair still had yet to notice that Blue wasn't present, nor that a third person, a woman, was watching them. Exhausted, the squabbling pair felt over, chests heaving and wanting for breath, blood from their mouths and other places.

"What are you two idiots doing?" asked the coal-haired woman, with open disdain laced in her voice. "Don't you see that Chosen is the only real OTP? Special and OldRival are both stupid."

An alarm clock came flying from the bedroom window, knocking her out cold.

* * *

"You have to break up with her," said the brunette to Emerald.

The slightly-shorter-than-five-feet-tall teen eyed the taller lady. "Come again?"

"You," she emphasized, "need. to. break. up. with. Crystal. so. she. can. date. Gold. understand?"

Emerald was now frowning. "I hear ya, and not a chance."

"Take this seriously," she demanded, raising her voice. "This is for her own good, can't you understand that?

Emerald scoffed and rolled his eyes, and then turned to leave. He was stopped by her firm hand taking place on his shoulder. "What?"

"Dammit, listen to me," she snarled. "Crystal should be Gold's girlfriend, not yours. She doesn't really care about you that way, only as a brother, and you know that as well as I do. I don't know how you talked her into trying to date you, but if you really care about her, you should let her be with a guy she can be happy and look cute together with, and that just isn't you, Emerald."

The blond released an amused scoff. This woman actually seemed to think, thought Emerald, that she was right about any of that. _"It would probably throw her for a loop to know it was the other way around,"_ thought the somewhat-short blond. "Fat chance, weirdo," he bit back without turning to face her.

The brunette scowled, and stormed off. Once the lady had gotten forty-fifty metres down the road, she looked around that area of the street to ensure her privacy. Seeing nobody, she fished a rectangular device out of her pocket. "It's me, agent five-one-six-three-three. Emerald is refusing to end the relationship. Thus, I recommend immediate corrective measures of overwhelming force to be applied."

* * *

The director watched as the blue-suited young man walked into her office, unease painted all over his face.

"I wanted to ask, well," he opened, awkwardly. She quirked an eyebrow. "I've heard a lot about what goes on here, and- well, how is any of it ethical? I mean, brainwashing and tampering with spacetime?"

She sighed. "I understand your reservations, but it is a necessity. We've examined hundreds, thousands, of potential versions of history, and it is only in less than ten percent of possible worlds that all known correct pairs hook up. They simply don't know what and who are right for themselves, so they need us to lead them together. It doesn't matter if we change their minds or change history, the nobility of our cause justifies what would normally be amoral."

He looked uncertainly at her. "I-I realize that, but-"

"Stop," she cut him off sharply, and clicked on a spot of her table. "Security, we have a mentally unsound worker in my office who has a drastic need for reprogramming. Please come and collect him immediately."

* * *

On the beach of Slateport, both natives and tourists could enjoy themselves with a pleasantly-warm day. The ocean was utterly at rest, with nary a wave nor a rampaging sea Pokemon in sight. The skies were free of clouds, a bright azure expanse - for those who desired not to frolick in the sea, there was plenty of things to do.

Over by the beach's left side, a pair of teens and their non-human friends were enjoying themselves with a battle; their opponent was Phoebe of the Elite Four for the Hoenn region. The female teen, a petite blonde, was commanding a Machamp, while the guy and Blissey was watching the battle between Machamp and Banette unfold. Around those two, a bit of a crowd had formed from beach-goers of all ages. One or two of those humans had come moreso out of attraction to one of the trainers waging the battle than of interest in the fight itself.

While that was transpiring, a multitude of humans were lying stretched out on loungers, to enjoy the mid-noon sun and to gaze out over the sea. Among them, there was a certain Kantonian pair - trainers, Pokedex Holders, boyfriend and girlfriend. One was a woman in her twenties with long blonde hair who was garbed in a green two-piece, whereas the other, he was a ebon-haired man in red swim-shorts.

"Red?" voiced Yellow, with faint annoyance. "Is the guy still spying on us?"

The Fighter shrugged. "Think so."

Said guy was a good distance from them, over by the Soda-Pop stand, away from prying eyes (or so he believed himself). There, he was buried almost completely in the sand, and only the top of his head was exposed, positioned to let his eyes peer through the binoculars in front of his hiding spot.

_"I don't understand it," _groused the buried man. _"Yellow's in a bikini, and in Red's company no less. She should be a wreck from embarrassment by now, why isn't she? Could somebody have made a mistake in adjusting her mind?_


	9. Four Ships With Gold

**To pre-empt any complaining (valid or not) about the vitriolic nature of the first snippet in this one; while I do realize that its content reeks of what is termed 'ship bashing', I wish to present the counter-argument that ship-bashing refers more to demonizing either person in the couple and/or making them express hatred for one another, whereas the incident alluded to has happened, without it being an exaggerated or distorted account on either her or my part.**

**I further wish to make it clear that any spite expressed therein is in no way intended for anyone in this fandom who do ship them, only towards the crap-pairing itself. All this is intended to do is help me vent my recently-acquired disdain for it while having Crystal remain (at least relatively) in-character.**

**All the same, I hope that you enjoy reading these snippets.**

* * *

_MangaQuestShipping_

_Yet another one mostly improvised_

She couldn't pretend that Gold was utterly an asshole (he had good qualities, even if they weren't always there to see), but on the whole, she wouldn't complain if she just _never_ saw him or talked to him again in her life.

Blue had just looked knowingly at her, when she had been told that. The raven-haired teen wondered if Blue had chalked that sentiment up to her being one of these messed-up women who masked romantic attraction behind bitter antipathy, like in every fifth trashy romance novel. It honestly irked her to be thought of as one of those cliches.

The raven-haired inclined her head, wondering if telling Blue that he had almost caused her a fiery death without the slightest bit of remorse once would shake that look off her face. It certainly had with Green.

She felt her lips tug up in a smirk. She knew it wasn't a very pleasant thing and that it wasn't worthwhile holding on to old grudges, but Green going through the trouble of roughing Gold up a bit after she'd mentioned the Typhlosion incident was nice of the Gym Leader - getting even for the near-death experience felt, in spite of herself, pretty good.

* * *

_PoliShipping_

_Imagine person A and person B go out to some kind of bar and try playing some pool. Person B isn't very good at it while person A is. Person A helps out Person B and teaches them how to play._

The twenty-one-year-old focused on the ball, readying the rod that he held; the shaft gripped securely in his right hand, the tip poking out from his fingers down on the table. With a forceful motion, Red made the break shot.

The cue ball shot forward, delivering a glancing blow to the yellow-colored one ball that laid at the front of the stack. Their arrangement was shaken around, but not yet broken, Red observed. He wasn't an expert in this game, but that didn't look good for him tactically. "Remind me again, I've got the... solids, right, and I'm supposed to get them into one of the holes before you can get the striped ones in?"

"Yep," smirked Gold, and extended his hand. Red handed the Johtonian the cue. "Awright, watch a pro at work," he boasted, and began to move. "Ya may be the Champion of the Pokemon League, but _I'm_ the champion of the pool table."

Gold stopped before the center-right hole, moving into position. With the sort of skill that was acquired rather than inherited, he made the shot. The ball rolled into the larger stack, scattering the balls further across the table. Then, he handed the cue back to the Kantonian.

* * *

_ButtShipping_

_Imagine your OTP(+) at breakfast the next morning after a night of kinky sex_

Gold watched, eyes glued to her, as Blue casually munched down on a slice of bread.

Though she was still naked from the night's events, with her chest proudly on display, the Breeder couldn't find the sight to be hot or sexy or arousing in any way. Weird as it was, it felt pretty much normal that they ate breakfast naked. It wasn't the first time he had ever eaten breakfast with a woman in the buff, but it _was _the first that it felt boring.

Figuring that there was no reason to put that question off, Gold went right ahead and asked.

The brunette spoke his name, a vaguely amused glint in her ocean-colored orbs. "Gold, care to recall _every_ place your dick visited last night, and I do mean_ every_ place? Do you really think I would bother putting clothes on, just for breakfast?"

Gold flashed her a smirk. Dazed memories of the previous evening, and the two-person orgy between her mouth and his dick, played in his mind. That settled it for him: Blue liked to travel, loved sex as much as he did, was a good drinking buddy, a top-notch trainer (he could appreciate a woman who could kick his ass), witty, funny, fun-loving, beautiful, intelligent, had (unlike a lot of the women he knew) patience longer than a grass-straw.

He gazed fondly at her, certain that he had just found his new benefits-friend.

* * *

_PreciousMetalShipping_

_Imagine Person A having a dream about making out with Person B and then awaking very confused._

The raven-haired teenager pressed his lips against those of the scarlet-haired male, absently noting their dry taste. Sensing no resistance, the Breeder deepened the kiss, moving his tongue in. Thus began a short and forceful duel between their respective tongues.

Gold awoke with a gasp. "What the hell?"

Then he felt the heat of the room, and a particularly intense heat coming from next to him. Slowly, Gold turned his head to the left. He saw Silver, recognizing him immediately by the hair's shade of red. The red-head was on fire, staring directly into his eyes, stark-naked. Gold screamed.

Gold awoke, again. Breathing quickened, he felt his heart pound almost painfully. "What the hell was _that_ about?"


	10. MagmaJewel - Another Path

**Guys, I have a bit of an announcement to make - lately I've been in a major slump, and found in looking it up that most of what I'm experiencing is symptomatic of depression. **

**Now, it might just be that I'm burned-out from wrestling with all these works-in-progress, but regardless, I'm going to be shifting the focus of this collection away from being a fandom-service thing - most of the pairings within the Four Ships With X series weren't things I am personally interested in but that the fandom had a considerably shortage of. As such, I'm no longer going to be accepting requests for either this series or the Digimon anthology.**

**Regardless of all that, I hope you'll enjoy reading this MagmaJewel-centric chapter.**

* * *

_Prompt: Imagine your OTP getting away with murder._

* * *

He inhaled, to calm his racing heart. He couldn't place why the thought of burning a human fazed him. He had practiced enough on Pokemon as it was.

"Are you ready?" came her voice, low and inviting. Her hand felt reassuring on his shoulder. He breathed quietly, telling himself that he was.

"Braixen," the raven-haired boy spoke to the fox. The vulpine biped perked her ears. "Ember."

The fox obeyed without hesitation, spewing the tiny fireballs towards the unconscious brunette on the ground. The three of them watched the burning of the body, each in a different mood.

The twenty-one-year-old studied the fiery gore with a certain amount of appreciation, grimacing when the child's stomach was burned a hole in. She couldn't pretend that people were always pretty when they burned, but the kid had a certain flair with this.

The fourteen-year-old was surprised at himself at how little he felt. She was dead because of him, but... he didn't care. He felt fine. Wasn't he supposed to feel horrible?

The two-year-old gazed with half-lidded eyes at the burning human, wondering if this was how things would always be with her new trainer. Humans, she decided, were weird. Why would they kill their own species for so little reason? Because they were prey or because they hated one another, she understood, but why this?

"Good work, Ruby," whispered Courtney, huskily, to the boy while the eyeballs smouldered. If he wasn't so young and if they weren't around a burning corpse, she would have taken him right on the spot.

The teen responded with a faint smirk, pleased with the compliment. Whatever else he felt about this, he knew that it felt good - _liberating._ Everything he loved about contests, the displays of grace and elegance and power crossed with dignity that Pokemon were capable of, there was here as well on the path of battling if he had wanted to see it. Now, he did, and he was free to exert all the power at his disposal - destructively beautiful and beautifully destructive - to his heart's content._ "How could I ever have given** this** up?"_

Quickly recalling Braixen, the two pyromaniacs-in-arms began to walk away from the charred carcass.


	11. Sixteen Odd Happenings

**Author's note: Decided to conflate an old PokeSpe fic into this thing. **

**A lot of the deleted fic was stuff that now really only makes me cringe, like the whole 'pregnancy yay' thing the first chapter had going. ****Most of what I deemed salvageable as well as the high marks of that fic's craziness was retained in this rendition of that whole thing, so it shouldn't lack anything of value.**

* * *

**001 - **_4 learns a new trick_

"Is Yellow okay?" Green off-handedly asked Red. "She's been staring at me for the past ten minutes."

"Dunno," replied the raven-haired teen, then turned to the blonde. "Hey Yellow, are you-"

He was cut off when Yellow suddenly yelled, "ZA WARUDO!"

Though no time had passed for Red and Green, Yellow had somehow disappeared into thin air.

* * *

**002 - **_13 learns a new language_

"Good morning, Missy, Diamond greeted. "Are you alright? It's already 10:30, and you usually get up about eight."

"-.-., -...-.-.." She replied, smiling. ".. ...-..-.- -... -.-.-...-.-., .-...-.-.-...-.-. -.-..."

* * *

**003 - **_9 also learns a new trick_

"THAT'S IT, RUBY! I'M GONNA KILL YA!" Sapphire exclaimed. Balling her fist, a thin pair of metallic claws ripped through her knuckles, accompanied by the sound of tearing flesh.

Ruby immediately decided to run way away from the angry teen.

* * *

**004 - **_And so does 11_

"Missy, guess what I learned to do!" Dia cheerfully told Platinum, who put down the book she was reading, to look at Dia. To her surprise, he was holding a cucumber and a plate.

"What might this be?" She curiously asked.

She would soon regret asking, as Diamond's shadow somehow got up off the floor. The shadow sliced through the cucumber, and returned to their proper place on the floor. She wasn't sure what made her more sick; that Diamond blatantly violated every law of nature she knew, or that he did it with an honest-to-God smile on his face.

There, several glowing red eyes opened on his shadow, as it, with its mouths of inhumanly large andd sharp teeth, gave her several cold smirks, before t went retreating underneath Diamond's shoes.

* * *

**005 - **_4 finds something in a tree and tells 1 and 2._

It was an otherwise normal morning in the Viridian City Gym. Green and Red had just finished a battle, when Yellow suddenly floated in through the ceiling, glowing brightly enough to illuminate the gym.

_**"**_**_Rejoice!_****" **She spoke, her voice deeper, echoing throughout the gym. _**"For I have returned!"**_

"R-returned?" Green and Red exclaimed in unison, each one sounding very confused. "From where?"

_**"The moon!**__"_ She bellowed.

"The... moon?" They repeated, dubiously.

_**"Yes!" **_She replied._** "Where I have found immortality!"**_

"Immortality? On the moon?" Red asked uncertain he had heard her right.

**_"Yes, in a tree on the moon! Now I must go, and bring salvation to all mankind!_****"** She shouted, and went back through the ceiling.

* * *

**006 - **_13 learns a new technique._

"Comprehension. Deconstruction. Reconstruction." Platinum repeated those words a few times, focusing on the wooden table in front of her, and the elaborate circle of salt on it.

"What's she doing?" Pearl whispered to Diamond, before she clapped her hands together, next slamming them on the table, producing an electrical blue light. A small part of the table reshaped itself into a wooden mug, leaving an indentation, next to the mug.

"Success!" Platinum cheerfully exclaimed, clapping.

* * *

**007 -** _10 visits somebody, and tells 7 what he learned from it_

"Crys?" Emerald quietly said, with an odd look in his eyes. "I learned something today."

"Yeah?" She replied.

"People die if they're killed," He uttered the self-evident statement with absolute seriousness.

"Yes, Emerald," She replied, laughing a bit, unable to take him entirely seriously. "That's exactly how it works."

"I know, Crystal," Emerald smiled. "Also, I think that you ought to know that I cannot be held responsible for your actions in this time period."

Crystal stared at him, unsure if he was in his right mind at the moment. "Emerald, are you high?"

"No. Why?" He asked, looking unsteadily at her.

* * *

**008 -** 7_, 10 and 15 meet. What happens?_

"I have been waiting for you, Crystal," White spoke, in a voice that didn't sound too healthy, holding a red lightsaber. "We meet again at last. Now the circle is complete. When I left you, I was but a learner; now I am the master."

"You're a master of evil, White." Crystal retorted, activating her own lightsaber, which shone with a pale blue glow, and swung it at White, who expertly blocked it.

White then swung her lightsaber at Crystal, who barely managed to parry it. She swung again and again, and each time, Crystal blocked her strikes, with increasing amounts of effort. "Your powers are weak," she spat.

"You cannot win, White." Crystal said, moving backwards to avoid White's slashes. "If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine."

"Where the hell did the lightsabers come from?" Emerald wondered, and shrugged, continuing to watch them fence, attack and block.

* * *

**009 - **_1 plays Halo with 15._

"Which map should we play?" Red asked.

"Beaver Creek?" White suggested. She hadn't played much Halo, but she wasn't gonna tell him that.

"Okay then," Red smirked. He could clearly see that she didn't know how to play, so this would be easy.

Ten minutes later, he had lost soundly.

* * *

**010** _10 and 9 get a surprise from 6_

"NuqDaq fa' SoH pol yuch?" Silver asked Emerald and Sapphire, who seemed not to understand a single word he'd said. Indeed, Sapphire seemed to have gotten a headache from it.

"Uh, could you repeat that?" Emerald uncertainly replied. Silver complied, letting out another bunch of alien-sounding noises.

"Uh, one more time?" Sapphire asked, rubbing her forehead. Silver groaned, grabbed a pen and a sheet of paper, and drew several circles, in varying arrangements.

* * *

**011 - **_5 eats 11's lunch_

"Gold?" Dia asked, annoyed, looking at the empty dinner plate, where the sandwich he'd spent a good twenty minutes making, had been. "You ate my sandwich?"

"Yeah, I guess so," Gold nonchalantly replied. "Sorry about that, I'll make you a new one."

"You ate my sandwich?" Dia repeated, ignoring him, shaking with anger.

"Yeah," he replied, with a small bit of annoyance.

"YOU ATE MY SANDWICH?!" Dia shouted, small sparks appearing around him. Gold noticed the dinner plate, knife and fork tremble slightly, and deemed it tactically wise to keep a bit of distance. Then, he ran for his life.

Dia grunted loudly, as the sparks increased in volume and intensity, and were joined by a golden, flamelike aura surrounding him.

Suddenly, his hat flew off, while his shirt was torn to pieces by the aura, exposing his upper body, his muscle mass and tone visibly growing, his hair golden and spiky.

"**GIVE ME BACK MY SANDWICH, GOLD!" **Dia demanded, his voice deep, his anger blinding him to the fact that Gold had already fled.

* * *

**012 -** _12 challenges 3 to a battle._

"You're on, Pearl," She grinned to him, sending out Blasty. Then, she also took out her Pokedex, and pressed a button on it.

"Bio-Merge: Activate," It whirred mechanically, shining a bright blue light on Blue and Blasty.

Somehow, Blue's clothes disappeared, leaving her nude, which would have been pretty hot, Pearl decided, if it weren't for the fact that she somehow had no visible nipples, or genitalia.

Instead, her entire body, below her neck, was made of smooth hairless skin.

_"Dammit," _Pearl inwardly swore. _"Still hot!"_

Slowly, she faded out somewhat, and melded into Blasty. When they had, the amalgam entity began to crackle with crimson light.

The light faded, revealing Blue, who had grown to seven or eight feet, and had Blasty's cannons coming out of her shoulders, two copies of its head protruding from her wrists, extending to cover her hands, while leaving her fingers exposed, and her usual clothes, only changed to match Blasty's coloration.

"Let's begin, Pearl!" She growled loudly, in a deep voice that sounded both female and male.

* * *

**013 - **_12, 7 and 6 meet up_

"Yo, werd up," Pearl excitedly greeted Silver and Crys, who both stared at him, incredulous.

Crys was the first to reply to him. "What?"

"Dunno whatcha mean," Pearl grinned. "Ya, bye, ya' know what I'm saying?"

"No," Crys nervously replied, suspecting mild brain damage.

* * *

**014 -**_ 7 gets a surprise from 11, 12 and 13_

Crys had seen many strange events in her life, but_ this _definitely took the cake. _"And probably ate it too," _the bluish-black-haired woman resisted the urge to add, as that would be a poor joke to make.

"Alright, I'll bite. What is going on?" She asked, lightly exasperated, to Pearl, Diamond and Platinum. The latter two were sitting on the floor, apparently meditating.

"Dia's converted to something called Eckankar, because he claims to have read or heard somewhere that practitioners of that religion go to McDonalds when they die," Pearl replied, without a hint of irony.

"Say again?" Crys flatly replied, unable to think of anything to say that would convey the sheer confusion she felt at that statement. "Dia, I don't know how to tell you this, but people, regardless of religion, do not go to McDonalds, when they die."

"Oh," Dia replied, sniffling slightly. "I guess I always sort of knew, but I just didn't want to believe it."

"Wait, what about Platinum?" added Crys. "Why would she convert to that, even if she actually believed the McDonalds bit?"

"She hasn't," Pearl answered. "I have no idea why she's doing that."

"I hope to meet you in the halls of Valhalla some day, miss Crystal," Platinum cheerfully told her, from her sitting position.

Faced with such a ludicrous situation, Crys did what she thought any sensible person would; she started to laugh.

* * *

**015**_ \- 11 tells 12 some news_

"Pearl!" Dia shouted excitedly to Pearl, who was in the middle of a training session with Chimler. "I have awoken to my mission!"

Pearl and the Infernape paused, wondering what the other human meant by that. "To be a famous comedian?"

"No!" Dia exclaimed. "To fight injustice wherever I may find it!"

"Okay..." Pearl said slowly, while the Infernape stared blankly.

"Slide Evolution!" Dia screamed as loudly as he could. Pearl wondered what that was supposed to mean, and quickly got his answer, as something that was light-blue in coloration swept over his body, and where Dia had just been stood now a new and formidable creature.

He was clad in silver and golden armor, brandishing a large three-edged sword. His skin was orange, and on his back was a metallic pair of flat wing-like protrusions. His feet each held three sleek silvery claws.

"I now bid you goodbye, Pearl!" The strange warrior that Dia had become told him in a deep gruff voice, before taking flight, departing towards the horizon and Mount Coronet.

* * *

**016 **_\- __8 receives a demand from a strange visitor_

Ruby regarded the small creature in front of him warily, wondering exactly where it had come from, and how it had found him in their hidden base.

The creature was a brown and pink rabbit-like Pokemon, with black beady eyes and stubby fingers. Strangely, it was holding with it's ears a glass of orange juice. "I would very much like the money you owe me." The rabbit spoke softly, in a female voice. Ruby wasn't sure what was more confusing; that it could talk, or that he apparently owed the Pokemon money.

"What?" Ruby flatly asked.

"Oh, alright," The rabbit sighed, slowly placing the glass on the bedrock beside her, and delivering a solid punch with her ear to Ruby's groin.

"WHY?!" Ruby cried shrilly, doubling over in pain.

"Was that pleasant, Winona?!" demanded Lopmon, delivering a few punches to Ruby's abdomen. He was too distracted by the blinding pain to notice that she'd referred to him as 'Winona'.

"Did you enjoy that?!" The Lopmon continued, uninterested in getting a reply from him.

"Listen, this is crazy, you've got- OH MY GOD!" Ruby exclaimed, when the rabbit unleashed several energy-blasts. Ruby's skin felt as though it had frozen to pieces and crumbled off where they had struck.

"Alright, let's go to the bank," Ruby groaned in agony.


	12. MangaQuest - Crash and Burn

**Okay, welcome to what will quite possibly be the only MangaQuest I will ever again write - an attempt at subjecting the pairing to some much-needed refutation of the distorted personality-images and tsundere-routine that the fandom broadly tends to favor.**

* * *

Crystal was meant to be his girlfriend. It was just how the script was supposed to go. They were, after all, doing the love-hate routine that all the great couples did.

They would be even good for each-other - him the bad boy who helped the humorless workaholic learn to unwind, her the one who... well, he didn't really know how she could improve his personality. He was walking awesomeness, after all.

So, why wouldn't she let it happen? "Mind telling me how come?"

Crystal shot him an unamused glare. "Because, Gold, _you_ are an asshole."

Gold smirked. "Yeah, but, come on, that's just me."

"Yes," answered the navy-haired teen, gesturing at him, "it is, and that's the problem. Your heart is in the right place, true, but that doesn't change the fact that you're an egotistical reckless ass who doesn't know the meaning of the word, discipline. It doesn't even compensate much for it."

She paused, for breath. Gold decided against rolling his eyes, expecting that she would just lecture him again if he spoke up.

"You may be one of my best friends," she admitted, her voice half-way between bemoaning and relishing the fact, "but I would be lying if I said I can always stand you and the things you do."

He shrugged, intending a placating gesture. "It's not really that bad, Super Serious Gal."

Her face immediately became a stern frown. "Remember the day we first met, when we were going to the Indigo Plateau?"

He inclined his head, eyebrows tilted. "Sure?"

"Because of you," she glared at the memory, "Exbo almost gave me third-degree burns that day. I could've been seriously injured, but you didn't care, because it didn't affect _you_," she poked his chest for emphasis. "In fact, if memory serves, you just acted like it was an awesome joke he had told you."

To her satisfaction, Gold had the good grace to look sheepish. "Uh, sorry?"

"And right after, like you were trying to add insult to injury," she ignored him, "you saddled me with your entrance fee, which you never paid me back for."

Well, Gold wisecracked mentally, that certainly didn't sound fair. "C'mon, that stuff was years ago."

"And that's another thing about you that drives me _insane_," glowered the teen. "Whenever people point out to you that you aren't as perfect as you think, or that you're doing something wrong, you just dismiss it. When it's me, you just tell me to 'chill out' or something like that, for instance."

Gold's smirk didn't waver. "Can ya blame me?" he pointed to himself, "Johto's hero, here."

Again, Crystal ignored him. "Remember the Battle Frontier? When we were _supposed _to be helping the other Pokedex Owners? You just went ahead and brought snacks to that battle, because you can't not think about _yourself_."

"Hey, I still helped out," objected Gold.

"That, you did," conceded Crystal. "But here's another fun memory from back then. When the water-monster was down, and we were all going to join that tournament, remember what you asked me?"

Gold simply looked clueless. "How's that important?"

"You asked," exposited the Pokedex Owner, with annoyance, "if I actually wanted to join, like that was somehow a surprise to you, so here's my next question: What do you actually know about me?"

Gold blinked. "One more time?"

"What's my favorite book?" supplied the teen. "What's my favorite movie? Where do I live? Where do I volunteer every few days? Where in my hometown do I like to hang out? What friends do I have that aren't the Pokedex owners or the professor? What do I do for fun? What kinda places do you think I would like to visit? That sort of stuff."

"Ummm," muttered Gold, beginning to pace around. Crystal folded her arms, watching him patiently. After about two minutes, he faced her again. "Okay, think I got it," he was sure of it. With SSG, he thought, there wasn't a lot of options. "Your favorite book's a science textbook and the movie's some boring documentary."

Crystal's glare remained constant. "It's the Discworld series and the first Star Wars. Now do the other questions."

Gold breathed a weary sigh. "Okay, so _maybe,_" sighed the teen, "I don't know everything about you, but we can work on that. Just give me a chance."

"No, Gold, I won't," affirmed the raven-yet-blue-tinge-haired girl, sternly. "You're a mess of ego and unchecked behavior, and contrary to what you might've been taught by television, most women aren't attracted to that, myself included."

She paused a moment, before adding, "Now, while I _could _tell you to clean your act up before I'll even seriously consider the idea, that would be a seriously selfish thing of me to do."

Gold grinned. He could appreciate a girl who played hard to get. "So the answer's maybe?"

"The answer," she glared, "is and always will be no."


	13. Ruby of Team Magma 1

A million questions was running through Ruby's head. They all came to an end, by the same one conclusion: Why make any sacrifice or get into a fight, when he had an alternative?

"Actually, you know what?" he announced, affecting an indifferent posture. "I think I'll accept your offer."

Courtney scrutinized him, smirk dimming, yet-not-vanishing. "That's good to hear, but I'll like some proof that you're on the level. Recall your team, then I'll recall Ninetales in turn, and we will leave this cave with Swellow."

Ruby swallowed nervously, half-forcing his grin despite the presence of the Fire-type. Getting up, he moved to recall the five Pokemon - Mumu first, then the others - into their balls. He looked, uncertainly, to Courtney.

The raven-haired cultist gave the boy a mild smile, silently calling the mythical fox back as well. "Shall we?"

But a moment later, the two humans were flying off on the bird, towards the Rustboro end of the tunnel. The news reporters and company in their car arrived just in the nick of time to see Ruby get taken away, the back of his shirt firmly in her gloved grip, by her.

The chase through the tunnel was a brief-lived one, for almost as soon as the airborne pair had left the cave, the Swellow made a right turn.

The boy glanced uneasily across the landscape - partly forest, partly mountain-land - that unfolded before him. He supposed that it was a pretty sight, but he'd prefer to not see this from this high-up. Ew, thought the boy who had just gotten a fly on his cheek.

Their flight soon drew to a close, and they descended into the forest. Courtney simply put him down on his feet, and he gained steady footing while she jumped down next to him.

Courtney absently gazed in the distance, pensively. _"Fallarbor and the Meteor Falls are north of here, so we should be able to make an unnoticed path to the desert from there, or hide from the police if necessary."_

Inwardly, Ruby wondered if he had made a smart call. How could he win the contests or come home again if he was a part of their gang? _"Still, not like we can put up a fight against her now."_

The ringing of her PokeGear interrupted both their musings. With a quick motion, she grabbed the phone off its holder on her stocking. The caller quickly revealed himself as Blaise to her, and their conversation centered about the Red Orb, which he alone would have to find.

Though uncertain of what the 'Red Orb' was, Ruby listened attentively, especially when the man on the other end mentioned his name. "As a matter of fact," added the nineteen-year-old, "I've managed to get the kid on our side. I was considering handling his training myself."

All the response that got was a brief chuckle from the man on the other side. "Well, good luck with that. I'll take over the Orb hunting job, so don't worry your noggin with that."

Then, he hung up. For a moment, a pensive smile-slash-frown adorned Courtney's face, before she made another call. Ruby tilted his head, wondering who she was calling.

"Hey, boss," spoke the woman. "I've got an update. Ruby, the Gym Leader's kid, has agreed to join us, so I'll have to spend some time getting him into proper shape. Blaise has taken over the Red Orb search."

On the receiving end of the PokeGear, there was a momentary silence before Maxie responded. "That's perfectly fine as long as it proves of some benefit to the organization," announced the leader of Team Magma, "but, depending on how my meeting with Archie goes, you might only have as little as a day for a training session."

Courtney frowned at that. Ruby felt a pang of relief. "That's going to be a problem, but I think we can work around it," replied Courtney, eventually. "Can you have a grunt bring the Fennekin over?"

"The Fennekin?" the man on the other end sounded puzzled to Ruby's ears. A pause ensued. "Sure, I'll arrange for it. Where to?"

"By the Fallarbor coast," replied the young woman.

It took about half an hour of walking before the Magma pair arrived at Hoenn's west-coast - and while Ruby thought it was rather a pleasant, scenic forest to visit, there were places he'll rather be - and just as long of waiting before the mundanely-dressed Team Magma agent arrived with the Pokemon and its ball.

The twelve-year-old studied the contents of the ball in his hand, curiously inspecting the tiny fox visible through the red glass. From a bit to his left, Courtney observed the duo while mentally plotting their training schedule. She watched him inattentively as he took the Pokedex out of his bag.

To his surprise, it didn't have any information on it. _"Not again..." _Well, he _did _know a couple of things about it, even without the Pokedex - it was called a Fennekin and was a fire-type, and that was good for a start.

"I hope you're ready," called the Team Magma Admin, "because your training starts here and now."

Ruby gawked momentarily, then his face became set in a coy grin. "Look," he raised his empty hand, intending a placative gesture, "dunno how to really put this, but I'm not a fighter. I live for contests, not battle."

She rolled her eyes. "And just what makes you think they're mutually exclusive?"

Ruby glanced down. He couldn't tell her that. "Dunno," he shrugged.

Judging by that look on his face, she suspected that there was something to it. _"Expert liar, he's not, but that's mendable too." _"Regardless, what say we get started?"

He released a heavy sigh; by the looks of it, she wouldn't take no for an answer._ "And why should she?" _whispered a traitorous voice in his head. _"After all, you signed on."_

It was with a somewhat hesitant hand that Ruby sent out the Fennekin. Silently, she released her Swellow from his ball.

"Let's begin with an easy exercise," announced Courtney, and pointed out towards the nearby sea. Ruby took a curious look out at the ocean. "We're gonna be shooting fire out across the sea, as a bonding activity for you two. After that, we can handle the more tricky stuff."

Ruby swallowed uneasily, taking a moment to think and compose himself. Then, he turned towards the bright blue sea. "Okay... Fennekin, use the Ember attack," he instructed the little fox. The fox simply stared innocently at him, her tail wagging quietly.


	14. Frontier - The Next Morning

"So," whispers Emerald tonelessly, almost too quietly for her to hear.

"So," replies Crystal, equally uncertain of how to break the ice.

Silence presides over the bedroom, rooting itself into the air like a plant roots itself into the soil. The decoration of the room is relatively crowded, for its volume - there is the bed itself, positioned up against the west-facing wall. From there, through the somewhat large window, the light of the morning sun shines onto the room and the occupants of the bed.

Off the bed's foot-end, a distance separated, was the wall into which the clothes-closet was built along with the orange-hued sliding door. By the wall opposite their bed, there stood an unremarkable brown-wood bookcase with five different shelves both horizontally and vertically alongside a colorful array of books.

The clothes that they wore the evening before - a red sleeveless shirt, a green short-sleeved one, overall-shorts and bra, a pair of boxers and a pair of panties, a set of pants - lie sprawled around the floor, with no regard given by either occupant of the nearby bed.

The two of them lie there, quietly, utterly unclothed, face-to-face and their nakednesses covered up by the duvet. On their faces are light smiles, in contrast in the uneasy moods showing in their eyes.

"Good morning," says the blond teen, eventually. Crystal releases a breath, but the look in her eyes doesn't change. He decides against considering its meaning.

"And good morning to you too," replies the nineteen-year-old. The raven-haired woman remains still, eyes locked with his.

There is again silence, one that stretches a bit; its presence is neither completely pleasant nor unpleasant.

It is Emerald who first deflates the silence. "So, um," he pauses momentarily, sounding more than slightly anxious, "how was it?"

Crystal shifts her position, rolling onto her back while ignoring the mild sensation of the covers brushing against her boobs, staring squarely up into the ceiling, her arm over the covers and the covers over her chest. She feels an impulse to run her fingers through her hair, but doesn't.

He knows he shouldn't, but Emerald can't not take a peek at the rise of the duvet below her neck. He feels his face redden, and his little guy rise.

The teen's face is tinged with pink as she tries to find the proper words. About the last thing she wants is for either of them to leave wrongly thinking that they disappointed the other. "It was, um..."

"The better kind of 'um'?" teases her blond bed mate.

She releases an amused scoff that doesn't manage to become a chuckle, then turns her head to meet his gaze. "Yeah, that fits, Emerald," she is sure of that. What she isn't is what exactly she thought about it. Beyond the vague 'good', her brain seems unwilling to cooperate with her about defining it. "How about you?"

The smile on his face brightens. "It was- the major part was good," he answers, not caring to specify it any further. She smiles back, pleased to have pleased in this particular regard. The Catcher decides that that about sums the experience up. Yet, she is sure that it is half a lie - amateur or not, she is sure that sex wasn't supposed to include half the stuff from last night.

As they lie there, they slide back into the silence in all its semi-awkward glory. The silence feels how the blond imagines it is to walk through a minefield. He likes that thought, he decides silently, and looks away from her, out towards the bedroom.

The ceiling, Crystal thinks, can use a fresh coat of paint, and maybe something can be done to smooth out all those bumps on the the walls (whatever they are), and- she pauses before beginning another carriage in her thought-train. She's begun to ramble mentally, she notes and, well, is that really so bad? She hadn't expected to start that this soon, but she guesses that is just how it went.

Emerald shifts, turning to her. He stares straight at her. Crys inclines her head.

"Just curious, but how good are the chances that," he pauses a moment; to decide how to put it, she speculates, "that it's always gonna be this way in the mornings?"

She decides this is a good occasion for lip-biting, but doesn't. Instead, she gazes at the ceiling again. A bit after, she says, "I hope not," soon she adds, "don't really think so, either."

He smiles, releases a faintly humming breath, and decides that good. Then he feels her fingers, the familiar sensation of her skin that is both calloused and soft and her hand's warmness, wrap around his.

"So, just relax," she smiles, hoping that they'll both listen. "It's just, just... starting difficulties," a nice and reasonable answer, Emerald decides, and decides to not question it.

There's nothing that doesn't require practice, Crystal thinks; whatever they might want, out of desire to please or just because of their egos, a perfect first try at sex wasn't very reasonable. She's pretty sure there's a quote of some book that applies here, it is impossible otherwise in light of the sheer number of them, but _"whatever," _she thinks.

"While we're having this conversation," she speaks on, smile dropped into a neutral look, "what's the plan for this evening?" At his look, she elaborates, "If you're up for it, I'll like to," she grows a mischievous smirk, something she hopes looks flirty on her, "well, make another go at it."

To his mild surprise, he sighs with relief at that. A grin grows onto his face, one almost too wide for his face. "Love to," he replies, and the two words practically rush out from his mouth.

She flushes, and then smiles. What more is there to say, she thinks, to add to the conversation, and quickly thinks of something. "Got any plans for today?"

Mild confusion mixes with the unabashed joy on his face. "Nothing major, I was gonna hang out with Green."

"Well, I was thinking," resumes the coal-haired woman, grin unwavering, "that since we don't really have anything to do, there's really no reason to get out of bed just yet," she breaks the hand-hold, shifts minutely, then leans in to kiss him.


	15. Ruby of Team Magma 2

For about half an hour, they had been conducting Courtney's improvised practice technique, without no interruption from the outside world. Getting Fennekin to listen had been easier than Ruby initially expected.

"Okay," voiced Courtney, all of a sudden, to the other three, "I think that's enough for a start."

Ruby breathed a sigh of relief. A momentary silence descended over the area. Fennekin looked, curious and eager, up at the nine-tailed fox, who returned a stern stare at the younger fox.

Courtney was the first to speak again. "So, did you learn anything yet?" she hoped he had picked up on _something_ \- with as little time as they had, every moment was worth a diamond mountain.

Ruby's face scrunched over with confusion. "What am I supposed to have learned from just telling Fennekin to shoot fire?"

_"Guess I gotta tell him outright,"_ she didn't really mind. As her teacher had told her, the lesson stuck better if the student worked it out on their own.

"Basically, one of the more crucial things to know about Pokemon," she disclosed. "They don't abide to conventional logic and physics. They follow their own rules instead."

Ruby looked blankly at her.

She smiled indulgently. "You know how some Pokemon attacks can inflict status conditions, that paralysis lowers speed and mobility while burns cuts down on their attack power? How do you suppose that works, scientifically?"

Ruby released an "oh," at that.

"It doesn't," so he inferred she meant. How well it fit with what Dad had taught him, he was unsure.

With that, she leaned back into the tree that stood behind her. Her head turned to pensively gaze out over the ocean. Ninetales listened intently to their surroundings, eyes shut.

Sighing, Ruby sat down. Fennekin looked pleadingly up into her trainer's eyes, her desire made plain by the mild forward incline of her head. Sighing again and more good-naturedly, Ruby began to pet its head, quickly eliciting a contented purr from the vulpine fire-type.

Courtney smiled softly at the sight. _"Well, they're learning to get along. That's its own form of progress."_

A moment of no activity passed, then another one just like it, before Ruby looked up at her.

"What's next?" as little as he enjoyed battling and training, he would do about anything to get this over with.

She began mulling it over. "I suppose going for your next lesson would be good," was her eventual answer. Her only question was, what to make it. "How much do you know about where Pokemon attacks and techniques come from?" she voiced after a moment, looking his way.

There was a brief pause, before Ruby just shrugged it off. "Never really wanted to know."

From her waist-strap, Courtney took the Swellow's ball, and released the bird onto the grass.

"We invent them," she related, voice half-way stern. "Sometimes the trainer gets the idea for them, and sometimes the Pokemon themselves develop the skills. Swellow, demonstrate your Blazing Wings out over the sea!"

The bird flapped its wings and took off. Ruby watched its flight path - first a distance forward, then a straight upward turn, before the bird made that into a loop. Without warning, flames sprouted from its wings. A heated gust and a few dying embers swept over Ruby when it flew past them overhead.

Swellow stopped, right before the cliff, and flapped its wings. Flames and sparks flew off the bird, almost dying out before reaching the water. Landing, it turned around and began to strut over to Courtney, who gave its head a stroke.

Ruby looked, a fair bit amazed, at the bird.

She leaned back into the tree, face contemplative. After a brief while, a grimace appeared there as well, born of her realization of how the situation would likely look from the outside. _"Nice going, Courtney. A grown woman going off with a kid she's kidnapped sure doesn't set off any warning bells. What's your next trick, Stockholm Syndrome?"_

Then, she looked at Ruby, unease in her eyes.

"Hey, kid?" asked the Team Magma member, tone mostly casual. The preteen's attention went from the Swellow to the human. "If you really don't want to hang out around here, I'll let you go, no tricks."

Uncertainty brewed in Ruby's eyes. He couldn't tell if that was a trick, or if she meant that.

"Okay, thanks, but..." he paused for a moment, considering what to say next. "Why've you changed your mind?"

After a moment, she shrugged. "Let's just say that I don't feel right forcing you into Team Magma. So, no pressure, no duress, just make a call, Ruby."

The uncertainty in his eyes lingered.

He'd like nothing more than to back out of their gang, before his parents found out, and go back to winning the contests. Training with Courtney and Fennekin was just a distraction.

A thought occurred to him.

"How about a compromise?" voiced Ruby. Courtney tilted her head a tad. "I've got a few things to do around Hoenn, so if you and Swellow can give us a few rides, I'll think about it."

She gave him an amused smile. "I'm sure you will, and I agree to your suggestion, Ruby. On a different note, I've got a quick question for you: Why do you think I picked this place for our training session?"

Ruby wouldn't even pretend that he knew. The boy shrugged his shoulders. Courtney reached up, to pick one of the fruits off.

Then, she tossed it to Ruby, who didn't bother to try catching it. The Sitrus Berry landed in his lap. Fennekin studied it curiously, sniffing a bit to it, before a look of clear appreciation formed in the vulpine's eyes.

"I picked here because the berry trees here have plenty of Sitrus, Leppa and Lum berries," exposited the nineteen-year-old, "and they're excellent natural remedies for Pokemon. You should have enough from around here to get your team back to full strength, then we can have a quick battle. After that, we can go to Fallarbor and you can do your contests. How's that?"

Ruby responded with a nod.


	16. The Next Generation 1

The dark-haired girl gulped, almost having to consciously keep herself on her feet. "Who knew a door could be so menacing?" muttered the preteen. She shook her head, hoping the physical gesture would work as well as the metaphorical one.

Hesitantly, she then raised her hand to the door-handle. The door opened, and drew back. Inside, she saw a lab-assistant - the spitting image of a stereotypical scientist with her glasses and labcoat.

"Ah, hello, Opal," the blonde greeted with a soft smile, moving aside and gesturing inside. "Come on in, everything's ready."

The preteen walked forward, the Bayleef traipsing leisurely behind her as she walked through the laboratory.

On the far end of the room was the resident doctor in charge of the laboratory - hair a coal-black shade tinged with brown and blue, garbed in a lab coat, and a purple sweater with jeans underneath.

The woman stood at a considerable height over the girl, a smile on her face and gaze fixed on the other.

Behind her, there was a table that was empty except for the round red device.

"Welcome," greeted the woman, her tone formal. The green-eyed child smiled back, and sighed almost inaudibly.

"Yes, we were surprised and a bit uncomfortable to see that you'd volunteered," admitted Crystal, "but we know that you can probably handle most of what the job requires. To fill you in, you'll basically be conducting field research into evolutionary tendencies," informed the woman.

The girl quirked an eyebrow, face set in a mask of uncertain curiosity.

"Recently, we got a few reports from around Kanto and Johto that said that Pokemon previously believed to be fully evolved," the doctor went on, "like the Magcargo and Golduck species, have evolved again."

Opal gave a grin. "That's where we come in, right? We're gonna go check this stuff out, right?"

"Right," confirmed Crystal, returning a smile. "Your assignment involves visiting people around Johto, and finding out as much as you can about these Pokemon and how they evolved."

"Awright," she gave a thumbs-up, eyes bright with excitement. The ebony-haired child looked to the Bayleef, who returned a vigorous nod. Then she looked up at her mother. "Where's the first place?"

"The Pokedex already has the places listed," said Crys as she moved to pick the Pokedex up off the table, "and they've been contacted to let them know I was sending you to inspect the Pokemon."

A note of clear dissatisfaction showed on Opal's face. "I don't want you to help me just because you're my mom."

"I know," responded Crystal, a knowing smile on her face. "I assure you, I'll be trying to make this as straight-forward as possible regardless of who I was assigning the task to."

It actually made her feel a bit more at ease, though she wasn't all convinced her Mom was telling her the truth here, but she preferred thinking that to thinking the alternative, that she was just humoring her here.

The woman moved to pick the round device off the table, and held it out to her. The preteen eagerly accepted the Pokedex, holding it up to admire and study with a look of awe on her face.

Quickly composing herself, Opal put the device into her pocket, then bowed. "I promise I won't disappoint you."

Crystal gave her a soft ruffle of the hair. "I know you won't," assured the woman. "That's not going to happen no matter how this goes."

Now smiling, the girl went outside and on her merry way with the Bayleef, closing the door behind her.

Resisting the urge to giggle triumphantly as well as she was able - just a few snorty snickers - she fished it out of her pocket. With a quick glance, she spotted the button (a rectangular one, on the top of the disc) and gave it a click. It took her but a moment to find the note among the row of icons, and a moment to identify its interface as a touch-screen.

The blank note expanded to fill the whole page, and text had appeared.

_"A Flareon in Olivine, a Linoone here in Violet, a Tentacruel in Cherrygrove, a Rapidash in Cerulean, a Seaking in Cianwood,"_ she skimmed the list.

"Cool," spoke the girl, looking to the Bayleef. The excitement on the Pokemon's face was unmissable.

"Let's move," the girl broke into a run, the Pokemon following suit.

Elsewhere, over in the neighbouring region, another youth was spending his time on a different activity.

South of Pallet, on the island village of Cinnabar, in the arena hall of the local Pokemon Gym, a young lad was at present. With him at his end of the place were three small Pokemon - a turtle with blue skin, and a green-skinned quadruped with a bud growing from its back, and a lizard with orange skin and a tail lit on fire. All three were unsteady on their feet, and weary unease showed on their faces.

A Nidoqueen stood a short distance ahead of the trio, and further away behind the dual-typed lizard were her trainer - a middle-aged woman with brown hair, garbed in a pair of jeans and a blue hoodie. She was relaxed in her stance, fingers tucked into her pants-pockets.

"Ready to give up yet?" called the Gym Leader, tone light and teasing.

"Never!" the boy returned, shooting her a defiant glare. The three Pokemon straightened up in their stances... or as much as they now could. Bulbasaur just stood up straight. Charmander shot her trainer a half-lidded eyes look that asked, 'what did I ever do to you?'

"Well spoken," voiced Blue to Violet, an iota of pride in her eyes. "Here's your lesson number seven: Being persistent doesn't mean a thing if you don't have the strength to win. Nidory, Power-Up Punch Squirtle!"

The violet lizard charged forward, swinging her fist into the grimacing chelonian's shell in the moment after. There was a brief note of pain in the dark-haired boy's eyes, while the small turtle practically flew into the back wall.

Violet sighed. "Okay, now I give up," relief showed on the Charmander's face. Almost by contrast, the Bulbasaur looked disappointed. The human child turned around, walking hurriedly toward the battered Pokemon.

He crouched down, gently placing his hand on its forehead. The water-type looked woozily at him, with an off-kilter smile.


	17. Battle Dome Tournament 1

Eyes beaming with anticipation, Chuchu gave a proud bow to her audience. Cheeks tinged pink, the blonde waved to them.

"You ready?" Emerald called out to his fellow blond. Receiving a nod, he released the green biped from his ball. Glaring silently, the mouse's cheek-pouches flared with electrical discharge, so much that it haphazardly filled the air around her.

Sceptile watched her with mild curiosity. The tiny mouse broke into a sprint, and after a couple of seconds and the first five metres, made a leap towards his head. The grassy lizard intercepted the mouse mid-jump, with his left arm. Certain she had a good hold, Chuchu smirked.

Lightning raced from the mouse and coursed into the lizard, eliciting a pained yelp from Sceptile, who hurried to shake her off. As he clutched the scorched bit of his arm, the mouse backflipped through the air and made an easy landing on her back-paws.

Chuchu looked around, basking in the sight of her admiring crowd, revelling in the odd bit of cheering that she got. Again, she made a bow.

Within said audience, the head of the Battle Factory studied the mouse with a fair bit of curiosity over its prowess. From what he knew about the species, their powers should not be strong enough that they could square off with double-evolved Pokemon on even footing, yet this one was doing just that. _"What factor am I missing? Heh, probably as simple as these Pokedex owners being a gang of real badasses."_

"Focus on your opponent, Chuchu," instructed Yellow. The mouse opened her eyes, meeting the glare of the grass-type.

"Leaf Blade," ran Emerald's command.

Shifting a tiny bit in his stance, the lizard swung his left arm at the mouse. Chuchu calmly jumped to evade the strike. Almost reflexively, Sceptile made the same attack with his right arm. The mouse pushed her front paws against his right paw, shoving herself back and away from the hardened leaf. Seeing his opportunity, Sceptile swung his arms up, the impact of his taloned hands giving the mouse a right good toss.

As the next moment passed, the mouse flew barely a metre. The green lizard spun, swinging the steel-hard tail into her tiny frame, and sent Chuchu hurtling towards the right-side wall. Disoriented though she was, Chuchu mentally braced herself for impact.

The pain felt remarkably deadened, found the tiny mouse. It didn't feel mild, but it was fading from her as soon as she could feel it. An unsteady smirk formed on her mouse. Yellow looked with uncertainty written all over her face.

It took a moment, but Chuchu got up again, and shot the Sceptile a glare, cheeks sparking. "I ain't had enuff yet, ya hear me?" the rodent called out to the lizard. The humans around her only heard her words as an angry growl.

Sceptile smirked to her, certain that she had.

"Sceptile," called the blond, "when Pikachu attacks, counter with Detect, and then plant Leech Seed."

His smirk mildened a bit. Streaks of lightning coursed from Chuchu, who hollered a screech. Forcing his unease from his mind, he gazed expectantly on the mouse.

Chuchu broke into a sprint, leaping onto the arena. Sceptile narrowly dodged. The mouse adjusted her stance, breathing, as she turned to face him.

A hint of other-than-physical weariness accompanied the next breath from Chuchu, who lied down, a movement looking half-voluntary.

"I give up," called the mouse, what the humans around heard as a couple of squeaks. Sceptile looked uncertainly at her, as a moment passed. "No tricks," so saying, she stood up, and got over to her trainer.

Reaching down, Yellow scooped the mouse up in her arms.

"I guess this means, we give up," declared the blonde. It suited her just fine.

* * *

Gold shot Sapphire a smirk. The two were flanked by Typhlosion and Blaziken.

Wordlessly, the two pyrokinetic animals took a step forward, each scrutinizing the other.

"Get in close, and keep it up with Double Kick," commanded Sapphire, "don't let 'im get a chance to hit back."

The chicken broke into a sprint; three steps before the bipedal ferret, Chic spun around, its leg extended. Typhlosion hurried to block the kick with its front paws. Glee showed in the Blaziken's eyes. Shifting in her stance, she drew the leg back. In a single smooth motion, she spun around, put her foot on the ground and made to spin-kick the ferret in almost that very same moment.

For a moment, nothing happened. They just stood there, Blaziken smirking with joy of combat, Typhlosion with a wide-mouthed grimace on his face and her talons pressing into his stomach.

Then, Typhlosion became a white translucent figure, and the ball returned to Gold's hand.

"Polibo," he said, clicking the release button of the toad's ball. From a brief, bright flash, the green toad appeared. He looked bashfully around at the crowd, scratching his head's backside. "You're up, man. Go for the Bounce attack!"

Politoed readied itself for a moment, knees taut. As Trainers, Pokemon and their spectators watched, the toad leapt, half-way up to the ceiling. Blaziken grinned to Sapphire, awaiting the instruction she knew she would give.

"Clever," complimented Sapphire with a grin, "but not gonna work. Counter with Sky Uppercut," Blaziken pounced up at the descending toad, paw balled. With a noise that was really just rather underwhelming, Blaziken slugged Politoed.

Said Pokemon went flying up into the spectator stands while Blaziken landed back on the arena. The coal-haired teen wordlessly held the ball up, recalling Polibo.

They were screwed, and Gold knew it, and he was sure that they knew it too. _"Man, where was she when we fought the Mask of Ice?"_

Eyes pensive, he glanced at the two shrunken Pokemon in the orbs, who looked weary and grimaced back at their trainer.

"Whatta ya think?" asked the coal-haired teen to the two animals.

Typhlosion shook his head, smiling tiredly at the boy. Gold understood the message, but it didn't sit right with him to give up, especially not when all these people were watching.

Politoed grinned, punching his balled right paw into his open left. With a smirk to match, Gold released Polibo again.

"Water Gun," instructed Gold. The toad shot a jet at the chicken in the moment that Sapphire countered with the command for Blaze Kick.

With a leg on fire, the dual-type fighter kicked into the blast, and a small cloud of steam erupted from the collision. Quickly adjusting her stance for better footing, while the low noise of water drops hit the arena floor sounded, Chic eyed her opponent expectantly.

Sapphire smirked, pleased with this turn of events.

* * *

Green's gaze followed Ruby as the younger male walked onto his end of the arena.

The coal-haired preteen waited a moment, before speaking.

"Let's get this over with," to Green's ears, Ruby sounded displeased to even be here. Green had a hunch there was a reason, but whatever it was, it wasn't his business.

From the pokeball, Ruby released Mumu. Green and Scizor scrutinized the burly blue creature.

_"This unknown warrior is blue, like warriors of the Water element, so it would seem a safe initial assumption that he or she will not surprise me much in that regard,"_ thought the bipedal insect, stepping forward, _"and its appearance would indicate that it uses physical-combat tactics. Green's probably thinking the same thing right now, so he's gonna tell me-"_

"You know how to handle this," voiced the Kantonian.

Wordlessly, the metallic bug ceased his sauntering, breaking into a air-borne sprint. Almost in an instant, he'd gotten in close. As quickly as he'd done that, Scizor swung his left claw, and raked the dual-typed Pokemon over his face.

Ignoring his discomfort as best the Swampert could, he leveled a glare at the bug.

"Mud Shot!" called Ruby. Seeing the grin on his opponent's face, Scizor rushed back. He folded his arms defensively, as the muddy barrage washed over him. Once it let up, Scizor swung his arms forcefully, and their battlefield got a delightful little bit of mud-bath.

For a moment, they simply stood silent, and looked at one another. The proverbial clock ticked a second forward. Scizor charged, claws locking around the wrists of the Swampert. Straining against the hold, Swampert soon found the iron insect annoyingly hard to shake off.

* * *

There was one thing that Crystal was very sure of. "This is just unfair."

A screen was built into the wall. Upon it were an image of Blue, rendered as a video-game sprite, along with three birds - one with fiery wings, one with ice-covered wings, one with yellow-feathered and edged wings.

"I'm sorry," Emerald was half-laughing. "If it helps, I'm rooting for you."

A slight smile formed on her face. It wasn't going to make much of a difference, but it was still nice to hear.

About three minutes later, she was over in the arena room. Crys gave the massive crowd a toothy grin and a bashful wave in greeting as she made her way onto the arena.

_"Great, so on top of getting crushed, thousands of people are gonna watch..."_ she bemoaned, stepping on. Crystal looked ahead to Blue, who stood without a Pokemon beside her. "Can I ask," the dark-haired teen called out to the brunette, "why?"

Blue smiled faux-innocently. "Half because it seemed like a fun idea, half because I needed something to surprise you guys with."

Crystal grimaced, not very keen on opening this battle. No matter who she sent out, it was going to hurt. She cast a glance at the two Pokeballs, Monlee and Xatee meeting her eyes through the red glass.


	18. The Next Generation 2

Without much hesitation, the dark-haired preteen knocked on the door, then waited a moment. A tall woman in informal brown garments opened the door. Quickly noticing Opal, she shot her a displeased glare.

"Whadda ya want, kid?" grumbled the blonde. If this kid was gonna interrupt her during her day off, she damn well better have a good reason.

"I'm the one Professor Crystal sent about the Flareon that evolved," Opal informed her flatly, unsure that starting here was a good idea after all.

Susan looked unconvinced, but said, "Yeah, whatever," and stepped aside, gesturing to the inside of the house. Returning the gesture with a relieved smile, Opal began a leisurely trot in.

"He's out in the back yard, so you can probably do whatever," added Susan, peevishly.

Excitement welled up in her as she made her way through the entrance hall and the door at its end. She almost sprinted through the living room and out the open door.

There, contentedly napping on the grass in the shade from a tall bush, lay a beast. Opal's eyes took in the sight of the creature - the brown fur, the grey spikes growing from its back, the bands on its front legs, the mask on its face and its closed eyes. It reminded her of Bayleef.

Fishing out the round device from her pocket, she held it out to the sleeping Pokemon. With a click, the CPU of the device whirred. On the screen, a three-dimensional image appeared. Above the image, a box read 'Entei' and below it, another larger box provided a description. To the right of the picture, there was a handful of icons.

Annoyance broke out on her face. This thing didn't come with a manual. Bayleef's ball shaking then got her attention, and she moved wordlessly to release him.

The quadruped inclined his head, studying his human as she fiddled with the device. Her finger kept tapping its screen, which didn't entertain the human girl, so he looked over to the sleeping Entei. For a moment, he heard slight footsteps, something he didn't pay any attention.

The four-legs Pokemon trudged a bit closer to the napping Entei, while the human girl fiddled with the Pokedex.

"I give up," sighed Opal, eyeing the device with open irritation. "How do you work?"

A voice, male and amused, called, "That, I'm sorry to say, I don't have an answer for. I also don't know why there's a kid in my backyard, but maybe you can answer that one."

As he spoke, Opal almost jumped, and looked towards the front porch.  
"Sorry," added the brown-haired man. "Didn't mean to scare ya there."

The girl's expression morphed into an uncertain frown. "Well, I'm just the kid - the Pokedex holder, that Professor Crystal sent to check in about the Flareon," she pointed to the napping Entei that Bayleef was studying up close. "That it?"

"Yeah," affirmed Samuel, raising his hand to his neck. "If there's anything I can tell you to help with," she seemed so young, but he supposed the kid wouldn't be here if she couldn't pull this gig, "you can go ahead and ask."

Relief washed over Opal. "Okay, do you know how this Flareon evolved?"

"Evolutionary stones, that sort of thing?" asked Sammy. She confirmed it, with a happy hum. "Sorry, but no luck. He just went off two weeks ago and vanished, and looked like that when he came back."

She responded with a shrug of her shoulders, mentally settling her plan.

After recalling Bayleef, she said, "Thanks for having us, but I'm gonna go and do stuff," when she had said it, it occurred to her that it sounded stupid to say. "I mean," she hastily added, "I mean, I'm gonna call the professor from a computer and ask some stuff," she began an energetic trot. Sam smirked and scoffed, spinning and heading back to the bedroom while Opal walked through the house again.

Close to twenty minutes passed as she went on the familiar jaunt towards her destination, uneventfully along the port-side street and through the entrance gate. The Battle Frontier of Johto now unfolded before her in all its sleek colorful splendor, almost abuzz with the ambient noises of people... which she gave nothing of a hoot about.

Glass doors slid aside, and she walked into the castle.

"Hey, kiddo," called a female voice. Down by the foot of the staircase, a brunette worker greeted her with a raised hand while the girl trudged down. "Look, we're pretty swamped, so unless you're in a hurry, you might wanna come back tomorrow."

"I promise I'll be quick," answered Opal, returning the gesture as she made her way down the last bit of stairs and past the attendant. Tina shrugged indifferently, figuring that her job wasn't on the line, and kept mum as she went past her and the half-dozen dozen people around here.

Now through, the girl strode up the staircase, familiar sounds ringing out to her already from up ahead. Once she'd reached the top, a standoff caught her eyes through the doorway into the arena.

On the far left side, she saw a dark and legless figure float, his fists balled as he watched his foe. At the room's center stood a quadrupedal creature made mostly of dark-blue stone that shot the ghost-type a glare. By the entrance, a trainer, and at the back of the hall, she saw him. A smirk graced his face, and his arms were folded.

"Beat them, Dad," the preteen whispered.

Surprise flashed on Emerald's face when he noticed her, turning into momentary unease.

"Dusknoir, finish this," commanded the Frontier Brain, a smirk on his face. "Punch it!"

The ghost lunged for the Gigalith, fist-first, and slammed it right in the kisser. Dusknoir moved back, cautiously watching the stone-beast. Gigalith looked well and truly toasted, remaining standing just for a moment.

Mixed frustration and worry showed on Jack's face as he saw his friend collapse, and he recalled the beaten Pokemon, walking away in a silent huff as Opal stepped into the room. Father and daughter greeted each-other with a fist-bump.

"Does anything bring you here, or is this visit just for fun?" inquired the blond.

Mild miffedness manifested on her face. "You've been out for over a week, and I wanted to see you, sue me."

"Sorry," said Emerald, softly. "We've just been busy here. Crystal and I have already talked, and hopefully I'll be home this week."

The irritation washed right off. "Thank you," the girl said, enthusiastically repeating it a few times, and leaping into a flying bear-hug. Being only milder taller than the kid, five foot four to her five, he kept his footing only with some effort.

"By the way, I kinda need to borrow the computer," said Opal, "give Mom an update."

Emerald withdrew from the hug. "Go on," he said.

Giving a nod, Opal began to walk, making her way into the back room. Emerald followed.

Around them was now a moderate-sized room. A brown leather-wrapped couch and table were left of the room's center, and up in the ceiling was a pentagonal lamp. Two doors, one in the wall at the back and one to the left-side end of the room. On the wall behind the couch hung a picture of Crystal, Emerald and an Opal who couldn't be more than four, together outside their house.

The two saw all of that as they entered, but neither one stopped to focus on any of it. The girl headed straight for the laptop lying on the couch, and eagerly held it to her pops.

With a silent-laugh smile, he accepted it, sat down and opened it, and typed the password in. Opal sat herself down, eagerly watching. Emerald clicked for the live-chat program, and moved the PC over to the table.

Over in Violet, in her lab, Crystal was paused amid reading the file about Hoenn species by the familiar sound of the live-chat program, and clicked on it. Through the screen, she observed them.

"What do you have?" voiced Crys, tone level despite her smile, hoping it didn't come off too harsh.

"Good news," answered Opal, her face bright. "I checked things out, and Flareon's evolved into something the Pokedex says is called Entei."

"Really?" spoke Crystal. Surprise showed on Emerald's face, and he decided against speaking.

Her expression turned pensive, and eventually she said, "That's actually not that surprising. I've heard of a posited connection between the three first Eevee evolutions and Johto's myth-Pokemon in the scientific community, and if we can figure out a way to replicate and document Flareon's evolution, then we'd have the means to finally prove that," the dark-haired woman turned her head to look at Opal. "Did you find out anything about how the evolution happens?"

Opal deflated. "Sorry."

"It's fine, Opal," assured Crystal, with a smile.

Emerald raised his hand to his chin, looking pensive. "This kind-of raises a question, though. If this actually means that Vaporeon, Jolteon and Flareon respectively evolve to the Phantom Beasts, then what does it imply for the other Pokemon that an Eevee can evolve to? Do they all have corresponding forms to take, or are they special, and how does that fit with their legend?"

Opal smiled a I-have-no-idea-how-to-answer-that smile, giving a shrug of her shoulders.

"That's definitely something you should look into, if you can," Crystal informed her.

"He said that Entei just dropped back one day, that's all," disclosed Opal. "Also, I'm kinda thinking about going over to Cherrygrove next."

Crystal made an indifferent scoff. Emerald looked somewhat concerned, noting the time on the laptop.

"You can do it tomorrow," the Frontier Brain informed the kid, his tone brooking no argument.


	19. Ruby of Team Magma 3

The walk, and the silence between them all the while, had given Ruby room to think. From those musings, a frown took shape on his face.

"Hey, kid," he eventually heard Courtney say, snapping him back to reality, with the same tone of voice that he couldn't define other than as indifferent. "Care to swap stories?"

He looked quizzically at her, meeting her gaze.

"If we're gonna be working together," elaborated Courtney, "we might as well know what makes the other tick, plus I'm kinda curious why you've got a thing against Pokemon battles."

Ruby inhaled tersely. A grave sigh escaped him. Eventually, he answered. "I've got two questions I'll like to ask you first."

"Go ahead," replied Courtney.

"Back when we were in the tunnel," voiced Ruby, "you said that fire was beautiful. Why do you think that? How can you think that?"

She smiled almost gently. "Simply put, Ruby, we humans are selfish creatures. We call rain bad weather, despite the fact that it's good for the plants around us. Same deal with fire. It's a natural wonder," her voice grew fond, "that consumes everything in its path, Ruby, and dances with joy and savagery at the same time. We're only afraid of fire when we can't control it. That sum things up for you?"

It did - Courtney was a pyromaniac, and a poet of one - but it didn't really change anything.

"Did you do Pokemon Contests once?" continued the boy.

The good humor on her face dimmed. "You noticed?"

"Now that I've had some time to think things over," Ruby informed her, "it wasn't hard to figure out that it was your ribbon you burned. You didn't have any chance to take one of mine."

Her smirk grew back. "Clever, that," there was a short silence. "Feeling inclined to share?"

Ruby looked away. Courtney supposed that that said everything.

"I've got a third question, though," continued Ruby, a half-forced grin on his face. "How did you learn all this stuff about Pokemon anyway?"

A light sigh escaped her. "Kinda a long story, but..." she paused, memories of Daisy playing in her mind. Her eyes slid closed. "I just have a lot of practice from back home."

Uncertainty showed on his face and Ruby decided that he didn't need or want to know anything more.

* * *

Ruby walked outside, a wide grin on his face.

By the left wall, Courtney stood leaned back, a foot against the wall. She observed the look on his face as he came into her view, inferring that things had gone well. "How great did it go?"

"All five," he answered proudly, "but what else is there to expect from my team? We are, after all, top-notch."

Courtney allowed a smirk, a short-lived one. Glancing past him, she began walking. For a moment, Ruby simply watched her, then he decided to follow.

Once they were a short distance outside town, she released Swellow. Their positions for the flight were soon sorted, and they were off.

A lone biker on the cycling road was treated to the sight of a chick in a weird costume flying with a Swellow while carrying a kid. They were holding onto the other, locked at the wrists. He tired of the sight quickly, and figured it wasn't any of his business anyway.


End file.
